G l l Tol Lennord Gale Mullins is my full name. I am 54 years old. I am a gatekeeper of brush strokes. My soul is art. I am art. Everything I do is art. I was born in the South in Tennessee. I was raised in Wisconsin. I have thirteen brothers and sisters, and ten of us are still in existence. I had a brother, Chester, who died when he got kicked in the heart by a horse when he was 12 years old. My twin sister died two years ago in her sleep. She had sleep apnea. I have another brother who expired a few years ago. I loved him dearly. His name was Calvin. He was a black panther from Wisconsin. He always called himself the bicentennial baby, and was really good with his hands in arts and crafts. I’m the youngest in my family. My oldest sister, Jean, adopted me and my twin sister and raised us both after my mother died in 1970. I was 10 years old. Before my mother died, she took me to a Martin Luther King rally. I got sprayed with water hoses when I was in my Mama’s arms. At the age of fi ve, I began to draw pictures with crayons. I am the only painter in my family, and I paint from my heart and soul to create things that other people couldn’t possibly imagine. People might see it, but they don’t understand it. It’s really art that watches you while you look at it. All my painting is me. I’m inside my canvas trying to get out. That’s why my paintings move. They have my energy in them. Art is my lifeline. When I touch down, I paint pictures that are universes and they are alive and they paint themselves. My paintings are portals in time. They transport beings or entities into artwork. I am like a spirit that has fl oated through different times and dimensions. I know Picasso, Matisse and Van Gogh because their spiritual essence fl ows through my brush strokes. I have stopped painting for long periods of time, but I store paintings, pictures and thoughts in my mind all the time. I can pick up a brush after ten years without painting and release centuries of pictures. But my art is never fi nished. It’s always a work in progress. It’s a story. I can just dust it with a brush stroke and the story will appear. I am artistic in all aspects of my life. Even as an athlete. I was an incredible basketball player when I was a kid. I would score thirty to forty points every game. I use to run track and I always came in fi rst place. Anything I did athletically I excelled in. When I was in the military on a base in Oklahoma, I took the trophy in a physical fi tness test with 490 people. I had blisters on my hands from practicing the day before, but I sucked it up and won anyway. I use to be a kick boxer when I was eighteen. I fought in tournaments. It was the Bruce Lee era and he was my favorite. I also love to dance. Dancing is like rhythm. It is my heartbeat. It is an expression of energy. I love to roller skate while I dance. I’ve been roller skating since I was ten. I skated in Wisconsin at St. Michael’s Church on hardwood fl oors on roller skates with wooden wheels. I use to go skating every Saturday at Johnson’s Skate Park in Wisconsin. I used to make jumpsuits and put studs on them that would say “Star Child.” I’ve been a part of the skate club, Skate Spectrum, out here in Denver since 1990. I skate at Deer Pile shows and dance parties just to hype the crowd and to make it more entertaining. I love skating because it’s so relaxing to my muscles and skeletal system, and it’s really benefi cial to my physical being, keeping my respiration going, moving, staying young and active. I’m older now, but I can summon all of my talents when I need to. It’s like a rubber band. It will always snap back to where I can do everything that I could always do. It’s like riding a bike. You don’t lose the mechanics of how to do it. lIKE A BEE lEnnoRd MUllInS ld To JonnY dESTEfAno I came to Colorado in 1987. I was 27 years old. At the time, I was a hairdresser and also a tailor. When I came out here, I got a job in the health care fi eld. I started out as a medical technician, then became a health care technician, and then a respiratory therapist until 2005. I’ve always based the jobs I have on helping people. I’ve dedicated my life to helping 17
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