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Where to begin... You'd imagine it to be quite easy to start a Journal, to share your ideas with the world, your personality, struggles and expressions due to being an Artist and it already being what you do, but, it's not. The life of an artist, especially a Model and Photographer from the outside looks like glitz and glamour, like you're ontop of the world and everyone is watching you. Only one of those things is true, there is a spotlight on you and it's not always bright. Sometimes it's dark, gloomy and full of terror, this little journal is my way of sharing my passions, it's ups and it's downs and to hopefully help others who might be going through the same or looking to in the future. Being a public figure, a model and artist atleast is like standing on the edge of a cliff. Overlooking the sea as a great storm approaches, you're unsure if you'll find your way, if you'll come out the other side... but no mater what, no matter how scary it gets you keep trying, you keep trying to find your path. So, that's where this story begins, a time of my life that looks the scariest. I've just come out of surgery, having my Throat Reconstructed, so I'm bed ridden. Unable to move around much and too confused to operate a camera, so for the next few weeks a pen is my tool. I might aswell start at the beginning, why I got into what I do, what inspired me and the struggles I have now. I'm 24 years old, born in Croulebarbe in the South of Paris in a dainte little town house along the sides of a small alley, dotted with fresh fruit stalls and artists offering to paint portraits for money. Every morning as a child the house would fill with the smell of fresh roses, cheese and oil paint, it was always so exciting because I never knew who I would meet that day. I'd run out of the house and down the alley, smiling at everyone as I stop at each artist and look at their work. I knew, as the bones are to my body that I was going to be a painter. I was going to inspire and give others the same feeling I felt everyday. When I was just 6 I picked up my first paint brush, dabling with my fathers oil paints onto the white washed lounge room wall. I still remember the look on his face as I filled with terror, thinking I was going to be scolded. However, he encouraged me but told me the wall is not a place to capture my feelings, to use the canvas instead. He took me by the hand and led me into his little studio, plopped another brush in my hand and told me to close my eyes. To smell the paints and just feel the canvas, not look but to feel and hear as I attempted to paint a Pink Rose. It was so exciting, I was so giddy. For years after I would steal away at midnight into my fathers studio and just paint whatever I was thinking, flowers, people, animals. Over the years as I grew from child to young adult I developed my skills and learnt a profound amount about composition, lighting, color theory and more. I'm not sure what I loved the most, learning the foundations of art or the feeling of getting lost in a world of my own. By the age of 18 I had enroled at Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University where I took an undergraduate of Photography & Visual Design, encapsulating my favorite areas of art and learning a new one, Photography. It was around this time that I got into a very unhealthy relationship with a older man, I was barely able to leave the house as he kept me inside... barely, just barely graduating due to innatendance. He was an aggressive man and everything that happened during our relationship would later effect my life as an artist, both online and independantly. I suffered severe damage to my wrist, leaving me with a lack of movement and shakeyness. It felt like my world ended, not the troubles of my life but the fact that I could no longer paint, I spent weeks, months, crying and trying to paint.. but I simply couldn't anymore. A straight line would turn into a squigle, a face would turn into a blur of badly painted features. I felt frozen, unable to go on. It was due to my twin sister Elyna that I was able to find myself again, she taught me what it meant to be strong and independant. She was heavily into Fashion & Design and would often ask me to take photos of her, letting me put my time earnt skills to practice. Through her, my beloved sister I found myself again. I used all the money I had saved from my childhood to buy my first, very own camera. I remember it vividly. The feeling of the cold metal, plastic and glass against my finger tips as I picked it up for the very first time, a Canon EOS C300 Mark III EF. It felt magical, although it cost me almost $18,000. Over 15 years worth of savings, leaving me with just a tiny bit left. As a present from my sister she bought me a lens for it, the 35mm DGO sensor. Little did I know, at this point that I would be seeing my sister for the last time in over a year. I took my camera and the little bit of money I had left and bundled up in a small yet long wagon. One of those types you'd see in the 1950s hippie movement, being my base and centre of life for the next year as I traveled across most of Europe, through Germany, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Romania and Austria. During those 12 months I took over 5,000 photographs, photographs I still have saved to this day. Memories, possibilities of the future from actions of the past. In Germany I got the chance to capture a stunning Brewery, in Romania a small Vampire-esque town, Sweden the icey mountain peeks and deep valleys. My journey across Europe had to end somewhere though, and that was with me boarding a permanent flight to America, the "Land of The Free". I touched down in Southern Los Santos, the warm summer air shocking me as I had never felt such intense sun and heat before, yet for the minutes it took me to take it all in I fell in love. The rest, well being for another page, another day.