host for the place to soar and i'm going to jump right in and by reading this this gentleman bio his name is j d baez and he's an artist from the philadelphia area and the sort of values that he selected are creativity and vision and when i read his bio and we talk to him you're going to see exactly why he chose those particular values inspiring authentic natural eclipsing truthful selfless and beautiful are words that come to mind when describing this painter j d bias he is an artist who while still in his infancy has produced many great paintings and art is born in puerto rico raised in brooklyn and now residing in philadelphia know when peace can capture his essence perfectly an essence that escapes jay these hands jake he has achieved for it he would not use to describe his feeds quite a few huge moments in his life with many more to come beginning with his love for our would stand from a special love for an artist named shana williams the love grew with a connection to his patience and eclipsing inner peace love lead his fingers to brushes aware of his heart walking into his heart as well someone to read this this quote that i picked up from him and it really kind of talks about one of the aspects of his paintings eyes arm our main focus and all my paintings not the shape but more of the arch the subtle squint of the eyeball you can get a completely different emotion if not done right you see personality and character so let's ever going to be so bleak and as for the even someone crying but i was trying to capture that squint you get that heaviness in your eyes before you shut its ear that way when you look at a painting o lines if you were to look a little deeper and closer you should catch some type of motion from and that kind of thousands who was a painting was created or what i'm trying to present for the world excellence so tell us a little bit of your story like how did you get to the place where you are now i mean especially since you've only been painting for two years yeah well two years ago i met an art of love hearted shona williams  she kind of like taught me the basics of oil painting in her teaching me i realized that oil painting requires something that i lack that the time you know is patient  honestly did not have patients at all before the time you know my life i was a new yorker so everything yeah so in doing so you know i kind of learned ok maybe you should just leave this come back for later not something that you could pack on now and even with my process now my personal painting process it's very layered so i start off and then i build on that  that kind of taps and you know just the depth that i'm trying to create the colors i'm trying to pull everything is like a layered and done patiently so this was would you say that your creative ability was a surprise to you it was as far as i have always been a visual person i was always in for a videographer you photography games it was always the visual aspect that i found pleasing so for me that actually create something beautiful was a shock for me because i could always capture it but me to do it with my hands was completely mind blowing even though you see other artists do it i never thought of me myself would be any good at it and so of course i try when i write so tell me a little bit more about what you do before you started as a painter ok before i was well my man of five has always been a computer technician i'm a khaki f x buff but before that i was really and so photography and i started off in high school which is a basic little canon and i fell in love with that then and going into the video i started trying to produce and play with music videos so it's always been evolving since i was younger it's just a different  same idea same concept different medium so i am always curious particularly with creative people i have a daughter who went to school she's a musical theater major and she's incredible on stage and i was able to see that she had a gift when she was three years old the first time she went on stage i could see that she had to give so what are some of the things that was showing out when you were a little kid that you kind of maybe hinted that you have this ability and this creative artistry lying with that within yourself as well my mom always said our she she's the pain ceased to do abstracts and she would always say beauty and that kind of stemmed off who the lack of beauty in life it was just like you know rough childhood beautiful imagery was my way of coping i have this really beautiful picture you know i took this when we were going through stuff you know and stuff like that so that's really what sparked off my artistic sense of capturing or trying to capture that circle or so for you just so you weren't necessarily trained or you went to photography school or what everything i've done is a natural ability it's always been not so martin natural it's always been there in truth and then i research ok so i study i've studied a lot of oil painters  even when i was graphy i was studying really good national geographic with hog refers i was studying their methods but doing in an urban setting those kind of like my way of just mimicking them but for me my my my own view of things actually is so how did you end up so you said you started off in new york when you were born in puerto rico so at what age did you come to the united states i was in the united states by the age of  not so much just living in new york versus philadelphia but from an artistic perspective do you see a difference in living in one type of urban environment versus another type of urban environment yeah actually i've been talking about with my friends a lot artistically different cities have a completely different vibe and a lot of artists have a completely different drive i went to boston for the first time about three weeks ago and the artists out there are i would call them just neo soul from the visual artists for the musicians so that's what i felt when i was out there you know i was really like we have these two beautiful paintings here so can we talk a little bit about these paintings and particularly this one this this is stunning to me and so can you talk a little bit about how this painting of all what's the roots she is a mix of all ok so it was inspired by her history and me hearing her story and how she's always tried to dig in there but being a light skinned black for yeah she's always been you know brushed off like we don't take your native american roots seriously that's something that she went through so i really tried so i just bring out something unique and her eyes were just so  for me ever since i met her and i said i'm just really going to focus on this i your eyes and and discussed in the photos this was where she felt was right for her this is the emotion she was trying to to end up with something this beautiful well like i was explaining my process is really layered like i start off with one color i do this entire painting and art is consider an under painting which is just trying to get that actual in the engine on the canvas but also play with the dept so i'll start with one color just to get her structure right it would be a blue could be a green with hers i went  the so tell us the story behind this beautiful pain that one has my that one is me it's not me as i the person but it's me as far as this is the painting that actually made me want to message is a subtle the butterflies were initially started at the just show a pattern but i wanted evolution and even in my are i feel like this is the one that just became a person versus a painting so it's off the wall it's becoming reality so hence the butterflies yeah and from here on out i expected to do better pieces and you know continue but this was my statement piece this is how you're going to take me seriously yeah yeah yeah because you can see the the metamorphosis that is you moving across the painting and that's and that is also i mean that's what i was on a i was going to do my metamorph again is just doing this for fun and let's do something important and let's send a message to people and let's bring this beauty to reality absolutely so this particular woman here is she a model or that was from your she's  wow so it's it's fun john you know capture expression do you have any self portraits i mean no i would never i don't i have this theory of where i don't see myself like everybody else sees me well to sort of the community or speaks on a social level or like from the activist perspective and if you could tell me a little bit about that right now where like i have a lot of pieces that are  pieces that we're going to be working on i just started called by the band beauty series and it's going to be women on my and it's going to be women of the six continents band by term on the travel ban and what we're going to do is we're going to each take a person from this continent and try and recreate them bring that to light that we are banning these beauties like this is somebody that you know can do so much more for the united states and i feel like you're just so you would mention if they have images of real people real people ok yeah from here on out i plan on doing more more empowering pieces of all of my art stem  from the idea that we are beautiful i do not like how we are portrayed in the media social network does it worse and now we have you know people and government that are blatantly trying to make  look even worse so i feel like my job as an artist is the least i can do as per traders beauty paint and you and let you see you are this beautiful this is who you are this is who we are so like all of my work is pretty much just all different types of women different positions different people and it's because i'm just trying to if i could paint one of each i would do that just to let you all know are all beautiful like and i so that's my goal as an artist as far as the political aspect we're going to start a whole new series of events just based  pieces that are going to be representing what he stands for and these pieces are my way of showing the world like listen this is what it's right here it's right in front of you i repainted it for you focus pay attention so this year is going to be really interesting for me good it's very exciting so do you do art exhibits where you have your pieces on display some talk a little bit about that as often as i can  i am like i said very new to this so i've been displayed at the urban our gallery in philadelphia that's actually how we got connected yeah i've been out there i've done a few pop up shows this year is my year it's actually start having my own shows whereas and i'll be hosting the show but i want other artists to come out and display their work with me alongside  me so i'm not sure if i'm going to get to the point where i'll be doing any solo shows this year but there will be a whole bunch of group shows that people should look out for i'm a blast social media with it  and it's all going to be for a positive yeah you know it's all going to be working towards something the latter donations you know new programs that we're going to try and start just to get the kids off the street you know the the last round we did was actually specifically for impoverished children in urban areas where we tried to you know just focus on that and bring people out and then have that the topic of discussion and what we will be doing is actually taking all this money and giving back to the community just given him back to the mike we want to try and start having programs where the kids could comment as well and  injustice when you think about it your kids are not hungry based off where they live chance to rap or just you know did a great thing he gave chicago school district a million dollars these are the type of things that i want to do yeah when i get there you know the government is going to take care of us so i think it's about time we just start taking care of ourselves you know and work together and build you know a community for ourselves absolutely absolutely so  do you go into schools or anything like that i will start going into schools i'm actually in folks with somebody in a double i feel p so we can actually start programs with as far as get and me and a few other artists in for schools just exploring for the kids like listen there's another way you care express yourself and you could do this too if you care to if you can do this we have photographers who are willing to work which you will teach you anything you want to know but just get fights just come and take this direction so how do you personally define creativity my creativity or just creates a ready and general would have i would have to say just just your mind taking something that your soul brings about your mind your heart and literally creating it putting it out there there's so many forms of grief over the i think everybody's are creative in their own way i cannot write i cannot write it all i have my are my friends writing which is the one that you read in the beginning my bible was written by him yes and i that's amazing to me how somebody production you know companies you know there's so many ways of being creative and especially with my and then on computers the way they're going yeah so i feel like as long as you're creating what your heart thinks  as long as you're creating what you'd want your heart to say yeah then you are a great creator that's does beautiful that is so beautiful so what i'd like you to do is because that like our audience to know how they can get in touch with you so if you have a that's be a easy and my web site is our bye bye is back excellent excellent so what are those final words that you would like to leave leave with the audience  i guess i would have to say that i think it's really time to try and promote ourselves better we need to stand up as artists and as businesspeople lawyers we need to start representing ourselves better because the media isn't doing it and i think after shows like you give people an outlet to come out and discuss these things or at least you know promote themselves to the world i feel like this year my goal is going to be just to promote my my brother my sister so we could build together my my personal pro is building and survival am so glad that we have the opportunity to to meet and like you said earlier talking about the urban our gallery that they're really how we indirectly got connected and one of the things that i feel really really blessed you talking about me being able to do this show is such a blessing for me to find those treasures out there because there are just treasures everywhere but you just have to open up your heart open up your mind open up your eyes to be able to see all the incredibly magnificent people that are out there on this planet doing fantastic things so i just want to thank you for braving that blizzard and getting up here and sitting down and talking with us so i really really appreciate you and i'm just glad you're here so i'm sure this is just the beginning of a really really fantastic relationship because when you do all these other things i really want to know what's going on and and you know connect to my network  and all that sort of ok excellent so there you have it just wonderful human being j d by as you can connect with him online on instagram as well as on his his website so i want to thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time at the place to soar bye bye