Musings of a Middle-Aged Artist

The beard turned white a long time ago.

It went kind of salt and peppery way back when I used to rock my youngest at “story time”. I thought it was just an tell-tale of the Nordic gene pool, not that big of a deal.

I used to hang out in the art room a lot in high school. Progressively more with each passing year. They had a thing called “studio credit” that was just the ticket for a skinny kid without a clue. It was usually quiet up there – especially after the old bat that taught most of the art classes finally retired. Actually, I think she was probably a fantastic teacher – she just didn’t want anyone to know it and I had a low threshold for loud bitching – still do.

The two clowns she left teaching up there tolerated me for my last two years, and I – them. I wasn’t a behavior problem at all – but they weren’t that impressed with me and I didn’t mind them being around. I could draw and write a few “art history essays” and they could chit-chat with their students and sing the praises of their teachers’ union with all it’s accomplishments and challenges. No complaints; no compliments – worked out pretty well.

My time up there probably got me through high school. I liked sitting up there while working and listening to the background noise in the room: stools scraping the floor as students shifted and moved about, the pencil sharpener, the radio. There was usually quiet murmuring – a soft buzz in the room but no yelling, no screaming. People got along and everything was fairly predictable up in that studio. There is no way those teachers could have known it, but things weren’t all that great at the Stillmunks’ ranch back then to say the least. I did have friends from a variety of clique’s and groups – there certainly were teachers at the school that I really did like and respect. But there really was something about creating, revising, and producing in the environment that those two managed up there that kept me pretty much in check. I don’t think they saw anything in me, but maybe they did.

I looked in the mirror today and noticed a wave of gray – (or is it grey?) It was a light grey and it didn’t think much of it. I’m 49 years of age at this writing – time to show a little grey (gray?). But I remembered a similar event, almost a deja vu, when I took a break from working on a graphite drawing my senior year in the high school studio and went to have a cigarette. The bathrooms in those days at that school were small janitor closet spaces with sinks and a toilet or two on the landingways of the staircases – therefore the staircases were segregated by gender – (It didn’t make sense back then either, just trust me – it was true back then.). I lit a cigarette in the restroom and gave a quick look at the mirror – experts call mirror-checking by adolescents a natural manifestation of  “narcissim”, but the reality is the fact that a whitehead the size of a guinea pig can form on any adolescent’s forehead at any time and if not lanced, it could end up with a name and listed in the yearbook after it completely ruins not only it’s host, but any future social situations as well. Fortunately, there was no herzog forming on my face  on that day – but there was a streak of grey or gray on my right temple that stretched back behind my ear. On my left temple was a similar sight, but not as pronounced. My sister had died of a disease I had never heard of two years earlier. I threw the cigarette down and checked closer. After a few confused seconds I realized I had rubbed the graphite off my hands and into my hair while I was working. I was lucky enough to see what I would like like later in life.

I remember thinking I probably wouldn’t live long enough to see it. I had predicted before that I wouldn’t go past 25 and it didn’t bother me. I went back to the studio. Pushed as many people as I could as far away as I could. In a few weeks I was kicked out of the house. Attended college for a while and lived the most outstanding, enviable, swashbuckling life I could put together for almost 10 years. No regrets. No pictures. Plenty of risks. Lots and lots of stories. I really gave it my all, but I eventually made it past 25 despite my best efforts.

Soon after my 25th birthday, I had a cathartic moment and dropped everything – absolutely everything. I got to do what most people only dream of doing – I stopped and turned on a dime. I then went back home to my dad, started healing up, and began the process of becoming an artist. Along the way I married, had children, bought a home, finished college, started a business making and selling art – it wasn’t just me – I couldn’t do it all without Madonna and she stills makes it happen every day. . .

49 years old, hundreds of paintings and drawings later, and looking at the changes in the mirror. It doesn’t matter what the next 25 years will hold. I am the luckiest person I know and I do know it well.

The home life is good.

I am an artist and I am in my studio,

but -

I don’t work with graphite anymore.

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