Youngest of 4, son to a microbiologist and builder-of-things extraordinaire, I was exposed to the very small and very well built at an early age.  I grew up watching my Dad take measurements on scrap pieces of  paper, that turned into scaled drawings, that turned into the walls and staircase of our house.  During those same formative years I was also being shown the world through a microscope by my Mother.  I didn't know what fractals were at 12 years old, but that didn't stop me from noticing the repeating geometric patterns in everything I could see, especially how the very small things built the big things.

                  The theme of being infatuated with small and precise things continued to develop when I watched my Dad build a dollhouse for my sister when I was very young.  I still get excited when I think about how he even built working circuits into the walls and had tiny lamps you could plug-in to the tiny outlets!  The layout, the grid, the structure of lines that could actually hold weight, straight lines creating the optical illusion of a curve?!  I was hooked, hooked on lines, small lines, but every line I put down on paper with a pencil or pen, when magnified, became a blurry, sloppy mess.  "Is there even such thing as a perfectly straight line?" I would constantly ask myself. 
                 The first Digital Art Workstation I ever used, was architecture software on Windows 95 that my Dad had loaded on to the family PC and used for his own projects.  I have vivid memories of building floor plans of imaginary buildings for hours on end, all scaled, labeled and ready to go. I was probably around 14 when I used Adobe Photoshop 5.0 for the first time to play with digital rendered artworks.  All through high school I used Photoshop for fun and got pretty good with it, it wasn't until I used Adobe Illustrator for the first time, after high school, that I learned what "vector graphics" were.
               If you don't know, vector graphics are the counter-part of "pixelated" images.  When you zoom-in on a photograph it becomes blurry, pixelated, and loses line quality.  Vector based images don't do that, they maintain line quality no matter how big or small you stretch, expand, or zoom into the image, because the D.A.W. software assigns values and expandable ratios to every curve and line in the image.  Basically, the lines stay crisp no matter how big or small it gets.  This was significant for me, because up until that point I was never satisfied with the lines made by pens on paper, because if you look close enough, like with a microscope, you can see the ink absorbing into the paper and the individual fibers, essentially creating a gradient, and destroying the illusion of a "solid line".  *phew*
               The only official art schooling I ever had was short lived, just like my attendance record at the various the high schools I was shuffled around to.  I was for the lack of a better word, "troubled" in my teens and early adulthood.   I dropped out senior year when I learned the credits from my previous high school wouldn't transfer, and I would have to repeat the grade.  I had my G.E.D. within 3 months and enrolled in college art classes while my peers were still waiting on their robes to be delivered.  It would have been a great accomplishment, if it wasn't for my heroin addiction forcing me to drop out once again.

              Dealing with chronic pain from an injury in my youth that never healed correctly,  from ages 20-30 I became a full blown heroin addict with multiple rehab, jail, and prison visits on my record.  I could fill a book with what happened in my life during those ages, but pertaining to my artwork, I was slowly able to teach myself new skills and practices in moments of mental clarity throughout the years.  Getting a CNC job here, a design gig here, hands on experience with machines and specialty tools etc., I never stopped learning, and I never will. 
              After I got clean from heroin is when one of the hardest struggles in my life began,  I threw out my back during a softball game and had to be carried home.  I couldn't get out of bed for close to a month, putting my socks on was agony, I used a cane to walk when I could.  I fell into the deepest depression I have ever experienced, the future didn't exist.  From that point around 2019 until now, I have been on a personal mission to become stronger and healthier than I have ever been, inside and out.  That's when I found Yoga and my life changed.
              Almost exactly one year ago, in March 2025, was the first time my impacted hip was able to be self-adjusted back into position.  The moment my hip was in proper alignment and my range of motion returned, and the pain faded, my outlook on life changed forever.  The only reason you are reading this right now is because I have spent the last 5 years of my life rebuilding my core strength and posture to be able to sit in a chair for more than 5 minutes without debilitating pain and discomfort.  I have been sitting on a Yoga ball for 8 hours a day, for several weeks building, and designing this site, something that would have been impossible in my past.
                I was given one of the greatest gifts one could ever be given in my rehabilitations, so now I feel it is my duty to share my arts and talents with the world, because I know, deep down inside, how much influence beautiful things have on the development of the human soul and trajectory of our species.
                 Thank you for reading, thank you for visiting my galleries, I hope you've seen something that makes you happy or inspires you to create something new of your own.  Have a beautiful day!
                                                                                                                                                    -A.J.Gladding