BREAKTHROUGH : The Painting That Changed Everything

Three years after leaving NYC with nothing, I lost it all again in a fire—90% gone. But this time, I had $3K, a job, and a farmhouse to paint in.

Three years after I left NYC with nothing, I lost everything again.

A house fire. Summer of 2007. Suburban Virginia.

My roommate stubbed out a cigarette in a plastic planter with a dead plant. Sat right up against the vinyl siding in the middle of a drought. You can do the math.

I was upstairs in the master suite, clueless. He was downstairs in the den wa…