It's incredible to me that it took me 50 years of spiritual work to understand what went off, not wrong, but a different direction than I believe should have been. I made wrong choices in my childhood; was led astray by the people I trusted (not my family) in the schools; the movies directed towards children; even my beloved comic books. I was an artist; I had an artist's soul; I had been drawing since I could hold a pencil. I always understood composition. Now that didn't necessarily mean that I would be a fine artist. It just meant that the arts were supposed to be part of my destiny and in fact that has been the case, just not the way I had hoped.
I bought into the fantasies of the sciences and studied everything; math, physics, biology, geosciences, chemistry. When I went to college the first time I majored in biology. I dropped out because of money and went on to become a lab tech through a one year program. I worked at it for a couple of years but moved to Florida where I couldn't be licensed. I was a good technician but I would never be a scientist although I could have been a researcher so I knew it so pursuing degrees in the sciences wasn't worth it. I kept drawing; experimenting; always the amateur. But my family saw me as an artist from childhood. They had greater insight than the educational system of New Jersey. Continuing on with my search for a career and at some point, after many jobs in banking and other businesses I returned to college. I majored in art. Finally. I studied everything: painting, life drawing, all the printmaking there was, sculpting, art history, contemporary history, cartooning, illustrating, fiber arts, ceramics and more. I experimented with various media. I received two degrees; was a TA and then, unable to find work (not ready to set up a studio because I was still not skilled enough in my mind) and absolutely no interest in commercial art. Cartooning was a possibility. A friend and I tried a couple of tims to start our own magazine but ...So, I went to library school. I like research. I like finding answers. I liked helping people. I have been a librarian since 1986. I'm good at it; always have been. And over the course of the first few years I stopped my art work.
In time I began drawing with alcohol ink pens creating pet portraits and writing comic books and graphic novels that were never published. Later, after my second retirement (the first had been to take care of my mother) from a library in Georgia, I began teaching and sharing my art on YouTube. I worked on stretching my style; using a variety of media new and old to me. When I took down the page I had over 2,000 subscribers. But Covid and several surgeries and that good old stand-by, autoimmune diseases, took their toll and over the past two years I have accepted that my hand is lost; that I will never be able to get back let alone better and it's all sapped my imagination. I would never be the fine artist I had aspired to be. I had held out hope. I mean Grandma Moses was way older than me. Still, I knew it wasn't going to happen. Now I just don't care to pick up a brush let alone a pencil. Truth be told, if I had gone into therapy decades ago I would have arrived here much more quickly but I didn't realized I had a problem. Well, that's not fair. I didn't realize that therapy could help me so I kept searching for the lost parts of my soul.
So, here I am, still doing spiritual work; still trying to put myself where I should have been at this stage of my life if my world had been different; still with a need to create so I chose to write. Well, I've been writing a blog for years. It's about my art. But now, there's a shift. I'm not sure what I'm writing about. I've been studying essay writing. I'm not looking forward to writing the great American novel. I don't care to write novels of nonfiction tomes at all. But I enjoy the art of essay writing. I just don't quite have my subject yet. But during my journeys with the Holy Spirit and guides I came to realize that I was never meant to be a fine artist. Possibly an art restorer or a critic or a curator or a teacher. I'm still drawing. Well i know i still want to draw but i dont want to share anymore. But, I have to accept the fact that the career I fought all of my life until YouTube, teacher is probably my destiny. As a TA I taught college classes and they were fun but I was never able to get to teach professionally, not even as an adjunct. Well, I don't know that I will do any teaching on YouTube again. Certainly I will never do art demonstrations again. I was thinking more along the line of Art History rather than technique. I've always enjoyed learning about the artists, the movements, etc. And looking at paintings; seeing art; helping others to see art.
Now I realize that many of you may think I'm over thinking my life, the effect of IGY (International Geophysical Year 1957-58) on my life and my education, I wish to share that I was not the only person my age (30s) returning to school to study art. We had all taken circuitous routes to get to where we were. Perhaps some of you are asking some of the same questions. A fellow art student kept talking about finding his truth in his art. I didn't understand at the time but I do now.