By John Fields
Biographical Data
Since the time my years were counted in the single digits, I liked to draw. It absorbed me.. When I was fifteen, the outstanding quality of my artistic abilities became clear to me and others. My strong point was, and still is, cartoons. I started to write and illustrate my own comic books. While in High school, I would write my own stories and illustrate my own comic books. Then I would sell them to my classmates who couldn’t wait for the next issue. I have a strong attraction for the superhero genre. It was, and still is, the only kind of comic books I write and illustrate.
In 1984, before I left home for military service, I created a comic book character then wrote and illustrated a book about him. By the time I returned home to New York City, there was a crack epidemic spreading to the four corners of the globe, and I became a casualty of addiction. Throughout my struggle with my addiction, the comic book character I created remained a close and constant presence in my life. I felt that God had impregnated my mind with this idea, and He wanted me to do something with it.
My crack induced haze lasted for twenty years. I was in denial for just that long. While sleeping on the floor of a city shelter one night, I decided I had had enough of the foolishness. I checked myself into a recovery program.
While in recovery, I sent a copy of my comic book to the Library of Congress. Now my comic book is copy written. This happened in 2005.
After completing the program, I moved on back into society. After twenty months of clean time, I relapsed back into the nightmarish hell I had left. In only ten months time, I was laying on a filthy mattress in an abandoned building in Hartford, Connecticut, broke and jonesing for more crack. I prayed to God with a really powerful intensity to please help me triumph over my addiction. That same day, I began treatment again. As of this writing I have eleven months clean and sober.
Back in 2005, I began taking an oil and acrylic painting class that was available to me at my recovery center. It allowed me to expand my perception of who I am as an artist, and I’ve been painting ever since.
At present, as a writer and artist, it is my primary goal to get my comic book published, and in doing so, glorify God because it is He who has blessed me with the talent to write and draw.
John Fields
Go to RENAISSANCE of the CREATIVE SPIRIT