The Unpredictable

The title of this book is compared to the life with epilepsy and the life of an artist. Just as much as the life of a freelancer artist is a life of instability, so is the life of living with seizures. When they come, they effect your daily life, your family, your work, your health, your future, and even your friends. They can even effect your education and your self-esteem. When you have time free from them due to medication or chiropractic work getting them under control, there comes another time when they stir up problems and complications once again. They come ‘unpredictable’ at a time when you’re going to a trip, meeting, or gathering, and brings a quick end to your plans. They come at a time of serious stress and depression which only worsens the daily life. This is to show you how living with epilepsy with the talent of an illustrator can make the complete daily life unstable and insecure. 

Art that is done with a brush, pencil, ink or paint with the stroke and flow of an artist’s 
hand has truly become a dying beauty. It has been taken over and replaced by fast pace computers and printers that use art and lettering (or fonts) by programs you buy at a bookstore, office supply store, or like many people in this fast pace life, on the internet. 
This book is to share with you that because of the limitations I experienced through living with epilepsy, I had to watch life slowly pass before me, having to teach myself the appreciation and joy of having the talent of an artist. I was told by another artist that worked for Texas Instruments as an illustrator, that if I kept on painting and learning from my own mistakes, it would take me years longer to learn but I would have a skill above the average artist who comes out of college learning a certain style where everyone paints the same. This was after I had completed five projects for TI. 
I was told by an art teacher that I was born in the wrong day and time because artists are no longer appreciated and used for their talent on canvas and paper or on lettering signs because everything is done with speed on computers today. This disability has kept me behind in the advancements of the computer world, but it has not stopped me from having a greater purpose which is to show people that real art which is done by hand and brush or pencil is still alive. It is no longer a piece of work that is enjoyed like the art of Keith Farris, Norman Rockwell, Vincent van Gough, Edward Lear, or Frederic Remington, but rather something that a computer tries to substitute or replace the beauty that comes from the artist’s imagination skills themselves. 
As I’ve gone through life with epilepsy, I’ve faced many times when individuals have tried to discourage me from furthering my time with art. Some were people who I was close to, some were other artists, then an art teacher, and even the frustration of trying to attend a college who wouldn’t take in someone with seizures, which was before the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 signed by President George H. W. Bush. 
After I faced these roadblocks and tests of courage, I fought through life just to prove that living with epilepsy, as long as my brain wasn’t destroyed from the ability to paint and draw, would not control me or rob me from the opportunities to pursue my talent by working for individuals, companies, teaching, and learning how to wrestle with epilepsy without being defeated. I saw Joni Eareckson Tada who is paralyzed from shoulders down, take her talent with the stroke of a brush by using her mouth to paint while she used God’s gift to share and educate across the world about living with her disability. I had the same desire to put my thoughts on paper to express that people with epilepsy have their own stories to tell, to help open the eyes of the average person about epilepsy, encourage others who suffer from it, teach doctors what living with this is like, and hopefully showing other people who have a handicap or disability that we can try to find positive things about our lives without letting it be an anchor to hold us down. Instead a tool to drive us towards educating and encouraging others who are suffering from their thorn. 
This book is to share with you the life as an artist who has had to live with epilepsy since age nine. I have drawn dreams, hopes, and mountains I wanted to climb, yet epilepsy became the main obstacle to slow down my learning and the stress of seizures actually caused the aggression and frustration to be put on paper to prove that living with epilepsy will not stop me. I share with you famous people with the same ghost standing by our sides waiting for the right moment, some whose lives were shortened due to it, and paintings with the story behind it to hopefully give you a glimpse of what living with epilepsy is like. If you take the time to read and look at the art, and say that you have gotten a little taste of what epilepsy is like, than the book was profitable. 

“All my life I have worked to be able to earn my living, but I throught that one could do good painting without attracting attention to one’s private life. Certainly, an artist wishes to raise himself intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain obscure. The pleasure must be found in the work.” -Paul Cezanne