For some students, life is known to be filled with patches of gray in every corner. Feeling the rough clouds pull you down to the hard pavement, there is no escape. Only those with the eyes of creativity would escape this world, taking each brush stroke of color to bring life a new meaning. This is the way Cristian Lara perceives the world. His brush held high, Lara has the light shining upon him, expressing all inside him through his art.

It started off with little Lara in the waiting room, a bleak afternoon in foster care with his brother, expecting another visit from his mother. Coloring book in one hand and a crayon in the other, he waited. “She would visit me, being pulled out of jail just to visit me and my brother,” he said. During these visits, a mother-son bond forms, all through the simple act of paper and crayon. “She showed me how to color to make things look pretty. Since then I thought about drawing 24/7 because it looked cool.” His mother, being an artist herself, is one of the few people to introduce Lara how it feels to add color in a grey life.

When Lara entered high school, life became a challenge, academically and emotionally. He ended up going to after school art classes in his sophomore year for credit recovery, meeting teacher Raoul Mora. Mora not only taught Lara how to find his true passion, “but also taught me to observe, to analyze and take interest to whatever subject was at hand, and this has twisted in with my insanity to help make me… I don’t know… Me.”

Lara incorporated his art skills to build a sanctuary in his life. “I actually finish my schoolwork to draw and then when I was done I would show Alexander Rebultan because he sat next to me in class so I can have a critique.” From redrawing Pokemon characters from a handbook his mother bought him in sixth grade, to bringing his own characters to life, there is always a way to improve.

Art is mostly seen as a hobby, yet Lara wants to pursue his passion after high school. He wants to become an animator, or anything that has to deal with animation. “I want to inspire and teach people how to adapt to adult life, and to teach people how to love each other.” Since eighth grade, Lara has been working on a comic that covers the main point — you are not alone. There is someone out there who is always loving you, even if that person is a stranger. “If you don’t see life as anything more than entertainment, what’s the point?”

Although art is a form that Lara cannot live without, he is planning to double major in animation and field biology. “I love to learn, to see the evolution of all living things, the love of nature.” There is always a splash of color on the canvas for Lara, and that is how he wishes to live — happy.