Today we’d like to introduce you to Christopher Wesley.
Christopher, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My story begins at the age of five.
The weekend had begun full of excitement. My father was an avid golfer and for the first time, he was taking my older brother and myself with him to one of his weekend tournaments. When I was told at the last minute that my brother wasn’t going to join us, it was disappointing, but I made an effort not to let it dampen my spirit.
During the whole trip, I put the exciting things we did into memory. When we came home, my dad had just opened the front door before I ran into the house and straight to our bedroom to tell my brother all the things I had seen and done.
That excitement turned to confusion when I ran into the room, and all of my brother’s belongings were gone. Moments later, I heard my father walk up behind me. “Your brother went to live with your mother,” he told me.
The first thing to hit me was an overwhelming loneliness. My mom had taken my younger sister to live with her when she first moved out of the house. Now that my brother was gone, it was just me alone.
I had always been a sensitive child, and a deep need to cry was boiling inside me, but then the second thing hit me – fear. It was understood that once my father started hitting, he didn’t stop until he either got tired or my mother interceded. But she was gone, and she had taken first my sister and then my brother. For reasons I couldn’t comprehend, one thing was clear – no one was going to save me.
I clamped down on everything I was feeling and pretended that I was okay. Days later, when I had the opportunity, I asked my mother if I could move in with her, too. “There isn’t room for you,” was her response.
The physical and psychological abuse I suffered by my father after being left behind turned me into a hostile and confused person by the time I was a teenager.
That changed when I started playing the guitar at the age of fourteen. Being able to express all the things I was feeling, but didn’t have the words for, gave me my first hope that I might have a future filled with happiness rather than violence.
Creating became my lifeline. It was the one thing I could control in a world that otherwise made no sense to me. Over the years, I went from the guitar, to songwriting, to acting, performance and page poetry, illustration, photography, and painting, fiction writing, and digital art.
This is why I call my artistic practice Anthrotonik. It is and has always been a tonic to living through the human condition. It has become my Artistic Agenda to be both an example and an educator, even to those who don’t identify as an artist.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I’ve faced challenges the entire way through my journey.
One of the two most difficult struggles relates to the visual art I make now, took place during my freshman year of high school when I took an art class.
The teacher gave me lower grades than some of the other students for reasons that neither myself nor the students getting higher grades than I could understand.
When I questioned the teacher about it, he said I didn’t have to try as hard as they did. This made no sense to me. I didn’t have to try as hard because I had already been illustrating since junior high. By the nature of my experience, I wasn’t starting on the same level as them.
But I put more effort into my work and attempted to push to the limits of my capabilities within the parameters of my assignments, but that was also rejected by the teacher.
The friction between him and me escalated to the point where I stopped creating visual art for nearly thirty years.
It took a mentor to get me to reestablish my connection to that part of myself. In hindsight, I now understand that my art teacher actually deprived me of my artistic expression. It was only with the help of someone else that I regained permission to explore that creative side of me.
In fourth grade, I became aware of the second of my two most difficult struggles. It began earlier, but I only noticed when my elementary school said I could only read at a third-grade level. At home, I was reading books my older stepbrother would get for me from the junior high school library.
I had no advocate from home and, in fact, was punished in the fifth grade when I used the word “pursuit” in a book report. My teacher flat out refused to believe that a word like that could possibly be part of my ‘limited vocabulary’. She accused me of plagiarizing my report from someone else.
Even though my father knew that wasn’t the case, I took a beating for that.
I spent the rest of my school career dumbing down my English and literature-related work in an effort to avoid further conflict. My hope of one day being an author stalled out from the complex I developed over what level of intelligence I was allowed to express. After almost forty years, I finally allowed myself to tell stories again. The first story I wrote and self-published, called “Regret in Triptych,” won the Global eBook Award for best short fiction.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I add an air of intrigue to the human condition by writing fiction stories in a story world where A Game of Thrones meets the modern entertainment industry as if told by Alfred Hitchcock.
I specialize in creating character-driven stories in my fiction writing and digital artwork that’s meant to inspire the idea that no matter how ugly ‘reality’ presents the world to us, with imagination, we can transform it into something beautiful.
At the heart of all I create is a belief in art’s power to transmit the most painful of experiences into the most enlightening of revelations. I’m most proud of my ability to be an example that expression is medicine, even if you don’t identify as an artist.
What sets me apart from others is that my own difficult path as a creator has inspired me to coach others seeking authentic self-expression and individuals undergoing major life transitions.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out.
My best advice for anyone starting out is to remember that the value of all creative works are subjective. No matter how ‘good’ you ever get, someone somewhere won’t like it, and you have to learn to be okay with that.
One thing I always try to keep in mind is that even when you consider legends in any industry or genre, I mean people who are generally recognized as masters of their craft – someone out there thinks they’re a talentless hack.
Or, in simple terms, you’re never as good or as bad as ‘they’ say.
Second, find the teachers who will teach you what you want to know. I had to quit my piano teacher because she was trying to train me to be a session musician when I wanted to be a songwriter. There will be times when you’ll have to ‘fire’ your instructors and mentors because they’re trying to mold you into something you don’t want to be.
Pricing:
- A Child of Fox and Phantom – Art/Fiction Book: $29.98
- The Metro – Original Artwork: $939.98
- Summer of ’69 – Original Artwork: $1,199.98
- Harmony – Original Artwork: $1,799.98
- Sinnerman – Original Artwork: $949.98
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.christopherjwesley.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christopherjwesley
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christopherjwesleycreates
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherjwesley/
Image Credits
Christopher J Wesley
