Ashlandsblog

My dad used to take me to his office. He’d have his meetings, and I was in the room next door, drawing. There was a stack of printer paper ready for me, and I’m sure I’d use up 500 of them a day. You could say we were both working at the same time.

Interestingly, you’d think someone so crass and heavy handed, and business minded would encourage someone to be more practical and less creative, but he never intervened. Even today, he never questions it. I remember him telling me one day that, before there was any language, there was art. On the walls of caves and trees and so on.

Eventually we’d go onto hire a resident artist from Iran. She was the quintessential foreign artist. Painting portraits of everyone in the family. She’d take me shopping with her, I never took shopping for oil paints seriously. The whole process of oil and paint seemed to industrial to me, then and now.

In High-school, where that picture is from, I never attended any of my other classes. I only went to the art class, 8am to 2. Never-mind getting in trouble for it, I was too sharp with my tongue and too intentional for someone to put me in time out. When the principal, questioned it? I said I’ll attend all my exams, but I need to only go to the art room and focus on that. And that is what I did. Ofcourse I passed, and ofcourse I had the best art teacher. She helped me not just with technical skills but with style. She would say, if you’re going to draw, or paint, don’t make it look like it’s a drawing or a painting. Exaggerate. Lean in. And so I did. Though I had trouble.

You know, you almost never have to teach a child the definition of art. They understand what it is. They might not be able to explain it to you, no better than any adult but they can feel it. Art is like that exact moment the universe is reflected back to itself with style it couldn’t have imagined.