When I was a kid, my parents would literally put cowbells on my sister and me, and once we got out of earshot, that's when they came looking for us. I was found a couple of times walking to visit someone's house when I was only four or five years old. Nobody saw me for hours. There was so little traffic—you could just walk and walk and there would be nothing but trees and pasture land.

Back then there were a lot of repeat summer visitors. It was like an extended part of the family who visit in the summer, instead of at Thanksgiving. Now, a lot of those visitors have built their houses next door and retired here. The relationships we once had with summer visitors have kind of matured into a permanent thing.

I grew up with my dad being a kind of jack-of-all-trades farmer—the same with my grandfather—so I come from that background, which is normal for the town I grew up in. It's a little more agrarian, with a lot more farmers and fishermen than elsewhere on the island. I just happened to be good at art from when I was very young, and I was encouraged to do that.

Rez Williams and Alan Whiting were local artists who made money painting. It seemed reasonable that I could do that as well.

As far as farming and fishing goes, the squeeze has been on for people in those families. They've just been pushed out of doing that work because the money to do it, while raising a family, just isn't there. You can't live on Martha's Vineyard and earn a living as a fisherman. I mean, you can, but it's extremely hard. The same with farming: You have the farming land, but it becomes so valuable—just as land in general—that it's really hard to farm and do everything you need to do to afford to live here.

I do some small farming now—just growing our own food and trying to be self-sustainable. There's a lot of trading between people who still farm around here. Some people raise chickens and slaughter them or trade eggs with people who raise pigs. There are people who raise cattle, so they'll sell their dairy and meat. It's local farmers doing their thing as best they can.

The Vineyard has a diverse character. You have the agrarian end of the island with long vistas. Then you have seascapes. I like the bipolar nature of the island: You have this frenzy of people who come in, you get to meet people from different parts of the world, and just when you can't handle it anymore, they go away. Then you have this sleepy town kind of feel with a lot of solitude. But you know how some small towns can get suffocating? Because of the nature of the tourism, you escape from that as well.

I like to paint the Allen Farm. There's a place called Sepiessa where I paint a lot. Up-island, I like painting certain things. In the summer, I'll go down to Edgartown. Martha's Vineyard has a lot to offer—you're not stuck in one place. It's not like when you live in the city where you only do cityscapes, or you live in the Berkshires and you only do mountains. Here, when you get sick of one thing, there's something pretty different you can find just by moving one town over. You move 20 or 30 minutes across the island and it's like you're in a completely different world.

I think the arts community here is kind of a part of life. Anybody can walk into a gallery. If you're a plumber, you can go to a play as easily as someone who considers themselves super-intellectual. It's not a novelty. It's like, "That's Joe. He's an electrician, but he also does theatre at the Vineyard Playhouse." It's part of the island's character.

The biggest thing for me—and this is because I'm a relatively new parent, I have a little two-and-a-half-year-old at home—is that there aren't as many families here as there used to be. When I was growing up, they were expanding all of the schools, and what's really happened is a lot of people who are wealthy and retiring have moved to Martha's Vineyard to make it their home. They've already had their families.

I think visitors to Martha's Vineyard are looking for someplace that isn't where they're from, and I think they find that. It may not be exactly what they were expecting, but they definitely find something that's not like anyplace else. A lot of Vineyarders call everything that's not on the Vineyard “America.” When visitors come here, they definitely don't find strip malls, fast food—we don't have those things and we don't want them. Sometimes that's refreshing for them and sometimes it makes them uncomfortable because they don't have that sense of norm. I think people usually come here for that reason. It just may not be 100% what they were expecting.

I really appreciate being from the place that I'm from and I'm really happy that I'm raising a family here. As one of the lucky few that can actually have a job on Martha's Vineyard and raise a family here, I think it's a great place for that. I feel privileged to be able to do that.