MY STORY

My first encounter with “art” came at about 2 years old- combining two of my favorite things nowadays, food and painting. (ain’t nothing better)

My Mom had left the room and made my brother in charge of me (he’s 5) for the 1 minute she would be gone.

Within that minute I had opened a jar or peanut butter, proceeded to scoop all of its contents out on the tile floor, shampooed my hair with said peanut butter, and created a lovely image soon to be discovered by my mother.

The words I uttered as my mom approached, knowing I had done nothing wrong…” I-I-Paint-In-Peanut-Butter”.

Heading up through middle/highschool I took a couple of art classes, my favorite being ceramics.

But,

Never took a painting class.

-as I grew to love creating more, I leaned towards pencil and charcoal realism.

Having the hobby of drawing had been split into playing sports and creating art.

I had joined the football team in middle school, made it to JV in high school, and eventually worked my way up to the starting job as a junior playing center.

Another jump- I made it to Mississippi College where I had gotten the opportunity to play at the next level after a short run at Holmes Community College.

Around my sophomore year I had had been recognized for my Kobe Drawing drawn out of all “24’s”. I wanted to make a tribute piece for his family after his passing.

It had been picked up by the local news and went semi-viral on TikTok and Twitter, with Bleach Report reaching out and reposting my drawing.

After this drawing I really wanted to start teaching myself to paint. As my senior year approached I honed my skills as a painter.

I started selling my paintings and found It was a great side income for me to help pay my way through my last year of college.

My Morgan Freeman painting(one of my final dorm-room creations) got seen by someone that knew him personally and Morgan himself reached out and reposted it to his instagram page.

At this point I knew I had something.

I had graduated college, went the Biology degree route, applied for nursing school.

Got the email.

Didn’t get in.

“Please re-apply for next year”

Deep down I knew I didn’t want to do anything but art, but the fear of not having a “secure” job was what made me pursue a nursing In the first place.

“If you don’t create a routine you will be assigned one.

If you don’t create a purpose, you will be assigned one.

If you don’t create a career, you will be assigned one.

People are too quick to adopt the structure that somebody else created to ease life’s uncertainty” - Dan Koe

Having gained the skills of painting, I learned video editing, social media ins-and-outs then started posting consistently. I improved the more paintings I completed and the more posts I posted.

Things started to roll, then die down, then pick up, then fall off.

It wasn’t until Joe Rogan reposted my painting that I hit constant growth like a snowball effect.

That was a little over a year ago-

I sit here today, thankful that I took the leap and thankful for your support. I have been able to proudly call myself a full-time artist for over a year now.

Hoping to inspire just a single artist reading this, you can make it. It is a very REAL job. Only if you want it to be.

-Sam Ryan

**P.S. you all wanted me to create another faith based work, I’m planning as we speak. Releasing December.. also all prints are still in production from the Print Drop. The first batch is expected to go out next week!

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