DO READ THIS
Hey, I'm Able. Before 40, I had the dream car, successful businesses, and my dream girl. Then a heart attack and loss of my family changed everything. I got sober and dedicated my life to art.
I paint faces because they have the power to change how you see yourself. I've always believed I have an ugly face. But I discovered something: the faces you surround yourself with become mirrors that reshape your self-image.
When you hang an abstract face on your wall—one that radiates confidence, beauty, strength, passion—it seeps into you. It makes you feel more alive, more capable, more worthy.
These faces can make you feel bolder when you're doubting yourself, more creative when you're stuck, more resilient when life knocks you down. They can energize a room and, by extension, energize you. They can make you feel seen, understood, less alone in your struggles. They can remind you that beauty isn't about perfect features—it's about intensity, authenticity, raw emotion.
Every morning when you see that fierce, unapologetic face staring back at you from your wall, it whispers: you are more than your insecurities, more than your past, more than the negative voice in your head. The art you choose to live with becomes part of your daily affirmation, reshaping not just your space, but your entire sense of self.
Want to feel strong, confident, beautiful, happy, hopeful or at peace? I have a face for you. And if not, let's chat and I'll make a special one.
ONLY READ IF YOU'RE BORED
How I Got My Name
My name is Able Six. No, that isn't the name I was given at birth —it's the name I carved out for myself when I finally became an artist late in life. I had to take on the moniker because I was making art illegally at the time, spray-painting on public property and in restaurant bathrooms. The name kind of stuck in the most unexpected way: when I tried to start a Facebook profile under my real name, the FB gods wouldn't allow me, somehow convinced I was this mysterious "able6" character I'd created. Life has a funny way of forcing you to become who you're meant to be.
A Childhood Deam
When I was young, my heart burned with dreams of being an artist. I would sketch in the margins of my school notebooks. I would make colorful bookmarks for people. I imagined galleries filled with my work, people moved to tears by something I had created.
But I grew up poor when my family first immigrated to the States—the kind of poor where every decision is measured against whether it pays the rent or puts food on the table. The pressure to make money wasn't just parental expectation; it was survival. So I buried those dreams beneath practical choices, sensible careers, and the relentless pursuit of financial security.
Chasing Money
For most of my life, I chased money like it was oxygen. I worked jobs that slowly drained the color from my world, smoking pack after pack to numb the growing ache in my chest, drinking to silence the voice that whispered I was living someone else's life. The stress built up in my arteries like paint clogging a brush—until one ordinary Tuesday morning.
A Life Attack
I was on Xmas vacation with my family and running up a mountain in Denver when I had a heart attack.
Though I maintained a mostly vegan diet and ran several miles daily it seemed the bad habits of my youth had finally caught up to me.
Lying in that hospital bed, staring at the acoustic ceiling tiles that reminded me of clouds, everything crystallized. I wasn't just having a heart attack; I was having a life attack. The realization hit me harder than the chest pains: I was pursuing money and ultimately drowning in unhappiness. The beeping monitors weren't just tracking my heartbeat—they were counting down the seconds of a life I wasn't actually living.
I Go All In
That was when art saved me the first time.
I went all in. Not the cautious, toe-in-the-water approach I might have taken at 20, but the desperate, nothing-left-to-lose dive of a man who had literally faced his mortality. At first, there were no sales. My savings account hemorrhaged as my soulmate and life partner supported me. Family thought I'd lost my mind along with my stable income. But slowly, something magical happened. People began to notice. My work—raw, honest, born from the ashes of my former life—began to resonate. Today I'm fortunate enough to ship my art to collectors all over the world.
I thought that was my happy ending. I thought surviving the heart attack and finding some success as an artist meant I'd figured out life's puzzle. But life (universe / God) isn't done teaching you lessons just because you think you've graduated.
My Soulmate
After being in a relationship for most of my adult life, my soulmate and life partner decided our relationship was over. It wasn't her fault—if anything, she did the kindest, bravest thing possible. She saw that I had become too dependent, too comfortable, too willing to let someone else be half of who I was supposed to be. Her telling me to hit the road forced me to become more independent, more complete as a person, less reliant on others to fill the spaces in my heart I (or God) was supposed to fill.
But knowing something is right doesn't make it hurt less. I spent nights crying. The silence in my room was deafening. The empty space beside me in bed felt like a canyon. Some nights, the loneliness was so thick I could barely breathe.
And that's when art saved me the second time.
A Comeback
Without art, I would probably be drowning in depression, replaying every conversation, every missed opportunity, every bad decision, every moment I could have been better. Instead, I live a life of being alone but not lonely—there's a key difference that I'm still learning to understand. When I'm creating, I'm in conversation with something larger than myself. The canvas doesn't judge my tears or my mistakes. Art doesn't care if I'm wearing yesterday's clothes because I forgot to do laundry. Art accepts all of me—the broken parts, the healing parts, the parts still figuring out how to be whole.
My studio has become my sanctuary and my daily therapy session. Each piece I create is a love letter to resilience, a testament to the strange, winding path that brought me here. I've learned that fulfillment doesn't always look like what we think it should. Sometimes it looks like a man alone in his studio at 2 AM, striving to create something that didn't exist in the world until that moment.
Lessons Learned
My name is Able Six, and I am learning what that name truly means.
I am able to survive heartbreak—both literal and metaphorical.
I am able to start over.
I am able to remain sober.
I am able to find meaning in solitude.
I'm able to create beauty from pain.
Art didn't just save my life twice. It taught me how to live it.