When I was about 5 years old I was drawing and there was a very accomplished artist in the neighborhood by the name of Will Anderson who worked with me here and there... More encouragement than instruction... But I took drawing and painting classes here and there growing up and by the time I was accepted to VCUs excellent art school I had been involved with art for a long, long, time...
It also didn't hurt that my mom put two very nice prints in my nursery as a baby... One was by Gaughan and the other Paul Klee... I grew up with them... I also lived near DC and my mom would takes me to all the gallaries in town...
Not too sure when it was that I became "an artist" as opposed to a drawer/illistrator/painter... That is something that you really can't teach... You can try but to be an artist is definately a gift from God... Doesn't matter what the medium is... It is a gift... I mean, there are plenty of very good illistrators who, IMHO, aren't artists... Draftsmen??? Yeah... Artist is difference from that...