Your story matters
In each picture is a whole lifetime imprisoned, a whole lifetime of fears, doubts, hopes, and joys.
Wassily Kandinsky
I grew up in the small coastal town of Cocoa Beach, Florida, during the height of the space program. Surrounded by nature and wildlife with a river for a backyard and the ocean 3 blocks away, I cared nothing of the world beyond my town because it wasn’t in my face 24/7. At the time, my Mom was an avid potter, and I went with her to play in clay and receive the tutelage of a master sculptor when I was 14. My father introduced me to one of the illustrators at NASA, and I knew that I wanted to paint astronauts on the moon for a living. I began airbrushing surfboards and clothes at about the same time, which led to a life in advertising, graphic design, and illustration. Feeling as though I had something to give back, I began teaching in the early ’90s at Valencia Community College, now Valencia University. A decision, I believe, inspired by several teachers in high-school and a sculpture mentor who were great instructors and great people.
Looking back, I’ve realized that all of these things are threads in the fabric of who I am; my choices, preferences, beliefs, priorities, and, ultimately my artistic decisions. It often feels that if I were to pull at the weave of my fabric, I would end up with one singular thread of many colors. I used to think of my mixed approach to a career in visual communication as unfocused. Still, ultimately it gave me a set of tools and insights that made it possible to write a book on the creative process and engender a love for teaching. My story is who I am and in what I express.
Art is more than technical ability, it is your story in 2 or 3 dimensions. If you put all of your energy on learning an expressive skill without looking inward, you miss the biggest part of your expressive voice. I emphasize this in my classes, but the following story makes my point.
In a small gouache workshop, one attendee struggled from the moment he sat down. He came on a whim with a friend but found the whole process frustrating mostly because he had never so much as picked up a pencil. He was done by the end of the first day, there was no way he could muster even a fundamental skill in time to enjoy any of the process. So I said, “Let’s come at this another way, tell me about you.” He replies, “I’ve made a good fortune in business and am retired now, but I love scarves!” Then I notice the brightly colored silk fabric around his neck. “Oh!” I says, “Well, you know two things, you know color, and you know pattern.” He readily agreed and spent the next two days play with what he already knew rather than reinventing a wheel that takes years to understand. He rocked that classroom, creating these Kandisnsky-esque paintings with his story and his passion.
The river was my backyard and with it came all of the river critters. My father gained the trust of one blue heron whom he ingeniously named “Old blue”. Somehow he trained Old blue to come in the house to get treats.
Don’t merely rely on the lessons of others for your skill or your voice. Look in for what you already know and see what you can adapt to your work. Eventually, you may find that the years spent studying, say, the canons of the head, were but springboards to the real you.
Take some time to write your life down, bullet point your memories and experiences, not just the big ones, the little ones as well, even the out of focus dreams of youth. Include the things you spent years in; architecture, home-making, air traffic controller, football fanatic, for example, and see if there’s not something you can tap into.
Pull at your threads a little to see where they lead.