In 1969, Jason Gammel was born in the small town of Crossett in southern Arkansas. He grew up honing his art skills on countless pages of notebook paper, barely pretending to do his class work.  "It's funny to go back and thumb through some of those old notebooks and see that I still have an interest today in many of the things I did back then", says Jason.  Airplanes, rockets, and musical instruments fill the pages taking the place of unfinished arithmetic. "You can actually see as you turn the pages how I gradually lost motivation in the class work. The sketches become more frequent as you turn each page. I think I was one of the few people who understood why they were called math 'problems'," he says. "I hated that stuff, still do."

Finally wiggling his way out of the public school system, Jason, at the age of nineteen, was thrust into the sometimes harsh reality of the world.  He became a firefighter.  "I had been with the fire department for about a year when I witnessed something that made me realize the responsibility that I had accepted. It was a profound moment that I'll never forget. After that, I really dug in and worked hard to be the best firefighter I could be, putting everything else aside."

After moving to Little Rock Jason felt the need to unleash his creativity and start painting. He had always painted and sketched, but really had more of a desire than ever to take it seriously.  "I started painting most every day I was away from the fire station. I was about to run out of space in my apartment," he explains. Since his start as a professional artist, Jason has created several hundred pieces of original art. His art has been purchased by corporations, designers, and private collectors around the world.

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