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In
1969, Jason Gammel was born in the small town of Crossett
in southern Arkansas. He grew up honing his art skills on
countless pages of notebook paper, barely pretending to
do his class work."It's funny to go back and thumb
through some of those old notebooks and see that I still
have an interest today in many of the things I did back
then", says Jason. Airplanes, rockets, and musical
instruments fill the pages taking the place of unfinished
arithmetic. "You can actually see as you turn the pages
how I gradually lost motivation in the class work. The sketches
become more frequent as you turn each page. I think I was
one of the few people who understood why they were called
math 'problems'," he says. "I hated that stuff,
still do."
Finally
wiggling his way out of the public school system, Jason,
at the age of nineteen, was thrust into the sometimes harsh
reality of the world. He became a firefighter. "I had
been with the fire department for about a year when I witnessed
something that made me realize the responsibility that I
had accepted. It was a profound moment that I'll never forget.
After that, I really dug in and worked hard to be the best
firefighter I could be, putting everything else aside."
After
moving to Little Rock Jason felt the need to unleash his
creativity and start painting. He had always painted and
sketched, but really had more of a desire than ever to take
it seriously. "I started painting most every day I
was away from the fire station. I was about to run out of
space in my apartment," he explains. Since his start
as a professional artist, Jason has created several hundred
pieces of original art. His art has been purchased by corporations,
designers, and private collectors around the world.
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