Artists Only

On my way to the back porch this morning, I paused for a few long moments to take in the most recent addition to our son's art gallery. This was an eleven by seventeen piece in crayon and pastel. It initially looked like the spidery arms of some dark galaxy, but as I looked more closely, I could see the layers of media stacked upon media, and the smudges that told the story of the work in progress. It made me think of the fury of the earliest paintings of my younger brother, back when his primary motivation was "freeing paint." This aesthetic is echoed in the postcards we get from "Art League Now," which are arranged in neat rows just above my son's drawings. I looked once again at the explosion of color, and thought of the past.
There was a time when I was going to be an artist. I enrolled as a freshman at Colorado College as a studio art major. I took Basic Drawing and learned, for what seemed to me the fiftieth time, about the different values of pencil shading. I learned texture and line. I made color wheels and explored primary and secondary and dreamed of the time when the visions that danced in my head would have some corporeal manifestation.
But I never had the patience. I remember the cone I turned on a lathe that started out as a four by four. It was the beginning of a model of a sculpture that was ultimately going to be thirty feet tall, with a sphere on the top, and hastily added fins that gave the whole thing the appearance of a clunky rocket ship that had crashed headlong into the moon. I satisfied myself with the intent of cleverly aping George Melies. But it was just another unfinished piece in a portfolio that was filling with near misses and half-hearted attempts. When I transferred to the University of Colorado in my sophomore year, I was required to take Basic Drawing one more time, because the credits didn't properly correspond. I was asked to learn the values of the pencil, and after a few weeks, I just stopped going. Because I never dropped the course, I received an "F," and subsequently spent the next two semesters on academic probation.
I have a deep and abiding respect for my brother and the patience he gives to his creative impulses. When I see my son get involved in a project, I try to keep my distance to keep from bringing it to a premature close. I still draw. Cartooning is a great way for me to get my clever ideas on paper, and then I move on to the next thing. Just don't ask me to color it in.