This is what I have been taught all my life. When I came home from Missoula, I realized I had never challenged this attitude that surrounded me. I had surreptitiously given myself permission enough to squeeze in this and that, here and there, but that was all I had allowed myself. I have been saved from taking myself and my work too seriously by never having realized how much I really discount my own ability myself. Dr. Bolton talked a lot about “being given permission” at some point in one’s young life to follow an artistic way. I had the fortune to meet mentors outside my family that validated my inner life. My parents were happy to bask in whatever kudos my talent brought to them, but it was not something to be invested in. Unless it was music lessons - they were heavily invested themselves in my being a classical musician, but I had no passionate desire to be one. Fortunately for myself, by the time I was in music school my first term in college at least I figured it out. Although I love playing music, being a musician is not something to learn to do just to have a job. I remember vividly the afternoon about midterm, I played hooky from all my scheduled performing groups and went and found a place where no one would find me with some pastels and a pad of paper.
I have been playing hooky all my life to sneak off and do what I want. I am just realizing that maybe that Rollo May fellow isn’t totally off base about letting one’s artistic talent go unfathomed. I had a huge period of depression after I went the First Friday art shows locally in November. I have been going to these shows for decades knowing that the best of what I can do is as good or even better. At one show, I saw a hundred paintings and drawings of local historical buildings that were inferior to my drawings. As a matter of fact, a lot of my students learn to do better work. And all of these people had been invited to a charity show to benefit the local Ronald McDonald House - and were billed as the Best of the Brandywine Valley. I went right after that to the Artists In Residence Show at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art. The caliber of the work certainly improved, but I realized that so much of the work there was retreaded recycled ideas. I knew I had thousands of ideas that were more novel and contemporary than I saw there. So what Was I doing anyway? Why wasn’t I renting a studio at DCCA? What was the real problem here? Why had I never considered it as worthy of my time? It wasn’t my voice speaking ….. why had I listened for so long?
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