dance

I did this drawing of horses playing over 20 years ago, sometime before I quit drawing and painting. Though I taught art for a couple of years during that time, for more than 15 years I almost never touched a pencil or paintbrush.

Though I didn't believe it at the time, I do believe now that if you are born with the drive to do something, and that something challenges you but also makes you happier than almost anything else, to deny it is to invite trouble.

When I started painting again, it was because I'd finally made the leap to understanding this fundamental truth, and I was tired of being miserable. Why did I quit when I'd drawn virtually every day during my childhood, and done a BFA in visual art at university? It was my own stupidity and lack of insight, of course, but I also now know that the role modelling our parents provide is far more important than I ever understood. My parents are extremely conservative and conventional people but they never told me not to be an artist. They were far too busy with their own lives to try and influence a belligerently independent child like me ... and smart enough to know that imposing their will on me would probably backfire anyway. Come to think of it, my father never actually had an opinion as he was incapable of taking an interest, whereas my mother's greatest fear was that her children end up as financial failures and drains on society (or worse -- on her) and let's face it, artists are romantic figures but at the end of the day, most are impoverished oddniks. If they had really objected and told me not to pursue a career as an artist it might have given me more direction as I had enough of an obnoxious, immature streak that I'd have wanted to prove them wrong. As it was, I digested their value system lock, stock and barrel without even realizing it. How did I know in my early twenties that financial security and respect from a status-conscious society would mean absolutely nothing to me when I turned 40 and actually had those things?

The rest, as they say, is history.