Peter Sartorello

Photography – Denver

I found my happiness through the Lens! It's been a long journey and rough ride to go along. I always have had a love for art and photography, but I could have never dreamed about being here, where I am today. I was a Professional Air Line Pilot for a military cargo company that flew around the world. The most enjoyment of my life was seeing and talking with our troops in nearly every part of the world and the best part was seeing that smiles that we would bring to them (mail) but we did caring many other things that are just not allowed to say,. So, of course I became to ill to fly internationally and moved into the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and overseeing the daily operations of the flight crews and training on the United Air Lines Certificate Management team on the Boeing 747-400 Fleet in Denver, CO. Then I became terminally ill with a rare case of Sarcoidosis, which is an autoimmune disease. This made me go into a huge downward spiral, I knew I would never be able to fly any airplane again. I had lost my identity ,which I had for over 20 years of. I've been very lucky to be able to be a stay at home father. I have two fantastic sons, they keep me going and fighting this horrible disease. I'm also very lucky to have found great doctors and that have became friends. The last time I was drawing was back in October of 2002 when my best friends wife called me to let me know that he passed away in a plane crash. My piece of art work and passion of drawing/painting/airbrushing came to an end for nearly 10 + years. Then my boys came along around 2009 my first, then 2010 the second, after that art became a part of my life again. The love cartoons and I've been so lucky in my childhood to have had Chuck Jones in my life. He helped me out more than ever and I can still hear his voice today saying," Peter to be good you need to draw, draw, draw and draw more... " I just love drawing anything for my boys and now I'm getting them into drawing. It's so fantastic, just seeing my boys light up with joy and laughter and watching their imaginations growing. I also picked up photography on the way. I always had a deep passion of photography due to my mom who had her own dark room in the '70's. I've never had a formal class for photography, when I was looking into college, I looked into Film schools, Art schools especially Emily Carr in Vancouver, B.C., but it came down to aviation and this has always been in my blood and fly is such a different type of art. I've spent a lot of time teaching myself all of the Adobe Products and also Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max, plus their entire group (the most helpful tool was that they offer 3 years of all of their products free of charge and this is only for learning. A very great tool. This has allowed me to learn 3d animation and modeling, I've been able to introduce photography into their (Autodesk) products and with the help of Adobe too to do short animation films for my boys. We do everything from sounds to music. Oh what fun it is. But I have to say that my true identity is getting into Freelance Photography. I have a huge passion for this and I'm in a great part of the states to be able to get out and get some amazing shoots! I have to say that this opportunity with Rawartist.org could not have happened to me at a better time in my life.