It was like someone shut off the faucet. I composed songs, joined an a capella group, acted in student shows. I did my honors thesis in fiction. Even after I transferred to Brown University, the art didn’t show up.
After college I embarked on a career as a singer-songwriter, recording three albums, producing a fourth and performing all over. I got some great accolades, including Oregon’s Best Singer-Songwriter 2007. Theater gigs popped up: Music directing, playing in the house band, even a little acting. Then teaching jobs: Musical theater camps for kids, music for synagogue Sunday school, and finally preschool music in the classroom.
Then another weird thing happened: In 2015 I fell off that building.
I didn’t mean to. I was climbing stairs to a exterior deck at an Air BnB in New Orleans. Once my friends and I all got on the staircase, it went down. I fell ten feet, broke my leg, and sustained a traumatic brain injury.
I thought it was a concussion that would pass. It didn’t. After weeks of laying in bed, sensitive to light and noise, vision-impaired, unable to read or watch TV, I did the only thing I could think of: I started drawing.
I don’t want to give the impression it was an instant transformation. I just sketched now and then. I dug up art techniques from high school and tried them out again. Slowly but surely, it helped. Slowly, I got better.
I kept at it. A few years back I got back into abstract painting with acrylics. I felt so at home in it that I just kept doing it. I studied other artists and teachers online, as much as I could with my still-recovering vision and brain energy. I couldn’t get enough. It’s super fun.
So I keep doing it.
Recovery from the brain injury has taken years. I’m still working on it. I might always be working on it. I’m definitely a different person today. But I like this me better. I’m more patient, calm, measured. I value things differently. I’m a better dad, friend, teacher, spiritual student.
I’m making art again, and I’m glad to be making it for myself, as well as for others.
I hope you like the work! Drop me a line at justinjcarroll@gmail.com.
My career as an artist started in 2015 when I fell off a building.
I grew up drawing everyday. As a teenager I added painting. I got into Carnegie Mellon University School of Art and promptly had an existential freakout. Did I want to be a professional artist? How would I eat? What about all the other things I wanted to study -- literature, theater, religion?
I switched to Humanities before I even got to my dorm room.
Then a weird thing happened. I didn’t draw or paint for twenty years.