Who is chefpaint

Hey, thanks for staying!

It’s a little weird to write about myself, but I guess I should start at the way beginning? When I was in middle school, I was taking a specific class called AVID. And because of this extra class, it took away a lot of my extracurricular classes- such as cooking. I was a bit upset because I really wanted to mess with fire and knives (and still do). So, I asked my mom to teach me any of her recipes.

I started out by helping out in the kitchen about once a week. Then I eventually started to look forward to cooking with her and would join in almost every night. I started to get pretty good.

Then of course Covid hit. And as any sane teenager stuck inside his room forced to zoom every class for a whole year and a half would do, I focused on my hobbies. Which at the time, was either cooking, drawing, or video games. But since being a gamer ain’t a stable job, we won’t talk about that.

At this point, I started to really consider cooking as a future career. I started by getting a job at a beat-down pizza shop while I was in school. And at this point, Covid had just started to become lifted. I went back to high school and tried an art class. Which made me realize that I might have two different career options. They had us all choose a photo of an animal, and paint it with the best of our abilities using their Crayola paints. That’s where I painted Jonas! (Jonas is the red panda in my portfolio)

At the same time, I still wanted to pursue cooking. So during my senior year of high school, I signed up for PSEO, which basically allowed me to take college classes during high school. I love that year so much. Every day we would go in, Chef Tracy would smack a packet down in front of us and tell us to cook every recipe in that packet by the end of the week- and she would criticize every single one. I’ve saved possibly 500 recipes from that year alone.

Skip ahead a bit, and I was working at Jersey Mikes. Realized that a fast food chain is not the cooking I wanted. SO came the job of a lifetime. Billy Sushi. Not in a million years did I expect to get a job like that. It had fancy liquor, thousand-dollar knives, and fish that cost more than my paycheck. They started me out on prep, and I got pretty fast. So after about 2 months of doing that, they moved me up to being a sushi chef! I was actually that guy who stood up at the sushi bar, cutting fish, and talking to celebrities. It was, I cannot emphasize- so cool.

The only thing that wasn’t so cool was all the other stuff that comes with a kitchen. Chefs yelling bloody murder, threatening you, customers being jerks, coming home at 1 am, drunk bosses, drunk coworkers, drunk customers, aching back pain, sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety, self-esteem issues, not being able to see my family, not enough time to myself… the money was good- but not that good.

So after quitting, I decided to paint. And I’m trying to paint a lot, reach out to galleries, and make this website (very new to me). Which brings me here. Sorry if you were expecting more of a painting-based autobiography. But that’s me I guess. 19 and trying to figure myself out. Thanks for reading.