SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­san­dral@ya­hoo.com

“Since the age of five, I loved to draw. My mom al­ways praised my work, even though it would be a sim­ple thing like box cars,” ex­pressed artist and en­tre­pre­neur, Dwayne Mc­Dow­ell.

“As I grew old­er, I worked hard and im­proved on my God-giv­en tal­ent but nev­er took the time to ad­mire any of my art work. I al­ways ap­pre­ci­at­ed oth­er peo­ple’s work but nev­er found that mine were great enough to com­pare.”

Mc­Dow­ell said all this time he was still at­tend­ing pri­ma­ry school, ea­ger­ly await­ing to reach to sec­ondary lev­el so that he would be able to of­fi­cial­ly choose art as a sub­ject, in or­der to pur­sue it as a pos­si­ble job in the fu­ture, but un­for­tu­nate­ly, the ju­nior sec­ondary school he en­tered did not pos­sess the re­sources to earn a full-time art teacher.

“I was un­able to get the for­mal train­ing I so de­sired. I lost all in­ter­est in art. Sports and oth­er typ­i­cal teenage ac­tiv­i­ties then led me.

“Up­on grad­u­at­ing from that school, and en­ter­ing se­nior com­pre­hen­sive lev­el, I was of­fered a pack­age to choose my sub­jects and I was most ex­cit­ed when art was dis­played as one of the sub­ject choic­es, but to my dis­may, I was not ac­cept­ed in­to the art class.”

Mc­Dow­ell said he be­came dev­as­tat­ed, and to his rec­ol­lec­tion, it was main­ly based on the fact that art has lim­it­ed space and since it was full, he was forced in­to tak­ing busi­ness sub­jects.

Artist Dwayne Mc Dowell

“This dis­ap­point­ment left me dis­cour­aged to the point where I did not even want to con­tin­ue to draw dur­ing my leisure time. I pro­ceed­ed to pur­sue bas­ket­ball as a re­place­ment for art, and even dab­bled in an­oth­er art­form, singing and chant­i­ng.”

Thir­ty-nine-year-old Mc­Dow­ell even­tu­al­ly be­came a fa­ther 11 years ago in 2011, but it was not un­til last year when his last child, three-year-old Zane, asked him to draw a car for him that he so much as picked up a pen­cil to draw again.

“I no longer had a sketch­pad or prop­er draw­ing uten­sils, but I made do with a copy­book and an HB pen­cil. Zane adored and loved the sports car and I, my­self, was a tad im­pressed with how the sketch came out. His ad­mi­ra­tion of my work led to a re­newed de­sire for me to start back draw­ing, which en­cour­aged me to seek the tools I need­ed to pur­sue my ini­tial dream of be­com­ing a suc­cess­ful artist. I then drew Zane!”

Mc­Dow­ell is cur­rent­ly putting to­geth­er his col­lec­tion of art­work to have his first ex­hi­bi­tion in weeks to come. His genre of art is pen­cil black and white medi­um of por­traits and na­ture.

“I learned how to eman­ci­pate my­self from men­tal slav­ery. I’m a very peace­ful and hum­ble soul. I’m steep in my African roots, and my art is in­tend­ed to cre­ate peace and cause peo­ple to re­flect on the beau­ty of life that which God has cre­at­ed. Life is art and we are the mas­ter­pieces of the grand artist – our Cre­ator.

“I give thanks for all knowl­edge. I live and learn, and we must learn and live well.”

Calming the Senses