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My father was an artist. In fact, I have
three small drawings of his, hand-rendered in great detail, that
I will always treasure. As a child, I asked him once why he
wasn’t working as an artist; why he didn’t have a gallery or
showings. He smiled and explained patiently that he didn’t have
the schooling. To this day, I don’t understand how it came to be
written in stone that in order to be an artist you have to sit
in a classroom and absorb the names of other artists who have
gone before you, along with their styles: Impressionism,
Baroque, Gothic, Art Nouveau, Art Deco. And in the end, you
would be awarded a piece of paper that proclaimed you were
officially an artist. Not to belittle the achievement of years
of higher study, but true artistic talent is shown on the
canvas, not the parchment.
My father never had time to study art. He was busy working as a
janitor to put food on the table, like his father before him,
who worked as a chauffeur, and his father, and so on. Somehow,
my father’s dream of expressing himself artistically had been,
not lost, but compressed into the smaller goal of creating for
his family, as opposed to creating for the world. I think it’s
the world’s loss. Dreams are our idealistic projections into the
future that, with a solid foundation, planning, and opportunity,
we can bring into reality. In the past, when some of the most
insurmountable obstacles were thrust in our paths, our strongest
dreams were also the simplest. Freedom and independence; a
family; good food; a warm bed; companionship; and the means to
bring all of that about…those were the dreams of our ancestors.
As our societies became more complex, our dreams grew with us.
We began to want more and to imagine more. That is the human
spirit. Now, we imagine fulfilling careers, running our own
businesses, achieving degrees of higher learning, honors,
prestige, and winning the lottery, just to name a few.
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