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From
the time Jason Abbott was very young he loved to
draw. He would grab any piece of paper
and pencil he could find to draw what he was
thinking. One time he even tried drawing
a picture on the side of a house. Jason
remembers "When I was six my older
brother talked me into painting my neighbors
house with a magic marker. Nobody told
me you couldn't paint an entire house with a
magic marker, or that you could go to jail for
trying, but I was six. I took to the
task with diligence. When my folks
caught me they didn't see artistic merit or a
budding artist, they saw a vandal and worried
I might end up in jail someday."
As
Jason got older he still would draw but not
always have the dream of becoming a full-time
artist. Jason spent ten years working
for the National Security Agency, the Office
of Naval Intelligence and finally contracted
to the US Coast Guard as a Systems
Analyst. In May 2002 he found himself
out of a job with a family to support.
He looked for work everyday and decided to
make use of his time and paint. He
started out with pastels and within a few
months switched to oils. Jason recalls,
"I was under tremendous strain. We
only had a few months left of our 401k I had
pulled out, I had to find a job or produce
some art that would sell." He
wanted to stay in the Hampton Roads area but
could not find a System Analyst job that would
pay what he had been earning. In March
2003 he was down to his last $138. Jason
say's " I approached MacArthur Center
here in Norfolk, VA to see if they would allow
me to paint in their mall. I was broke
but managed to scrape $400 together to rent a
small space next to a seating area. I
was terrified. I did not sell a single
thing that first week, or the next. But
as I painted, I noticed people seemed to like
what I was painting. They weren't buying
anything but they weren't throwing tomatoes
either. Those next two weeks were the
turning point; I sold nearly $3,000 worth of
my originals in eight days. I was just
beginning and getting better everyday. I
loved it the public was paying me to learn how to
paint. I had no idea what was coming but
in the next nine months I sold $65,000 worth
of my oils. I would later learn that put
me in the top 1% of all earning artists in
North America."
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