Suddenly, I’m an Art-ist

Well, it’s here!  Though I graduated a month ago, it took the university about six weeks to actually mail me my degree.  I was a little surprised to see that though I majored in Art History, the diploma simply says ‘Art’.  

I have a degree in Art.  Hilarious.

This diploma would astound my mother, who truly was an artist and though she certainly tried to teach me how to paint, eventually admitted that my talents (if indeed I had any) lay elsewhere.  Well, ‘lay’ was probably incorrect, ‘stampeding away’ might be a more accurate description.

From a very early age, I remember accompanying my mother as she set up her easel in a field and began to sketch the landscape.  That she could quickly produce brilliant drawings in charcoal and India ink of trees and barns was always an amazing feat that I envied, but could never reproduce.   The ability to draw is a skill that I have always wished to possess, but though I have worked and practiced at it, it has successfully eluded me.

Note.  My mother once predicted that I would never finish college.  In turns out that she was correct:  The university has just accepted my application to be readmitted.  In the fall, I will join many freshmen in pursuit of a degree in Economics.  

Having retired from the university, one of my retirement perks is the ability to take classes without having to pay tuition—a benefit that, evidently, few retired faculty members actually use.  I decided to study art history primarily because I thought it was about as far out of my usual wheelhouse as possible.  Frankly, I had no idea that art history would be so much fun.  The classes were enjoyable chiefly because of the great faculty who tolerated my relatively flat learning curve.  Professors Goehring, Marinas, Fitzsimmons, Salas, and Zarur:  thank you for tolerating my intrusion in your classes.

One of the requirements for a degree in Art History was a studio art class and I chose Drawing, which I took from Professor Tauna Dole, who showed infinite patience as she struggled to teach me the rudiments.  I really enjoyed this class, and actually did improve to the point where it is now possible for the viewer to usually be able to figure out what it is I am drawing badly.  

In my art history classes, I kept hearing about ‘brush strokes’ and other technical terms.  Many of these concepts were very confusing to me, so I bought art paper and a set of watercolors and began experimenting.  While this hands-on experience did help explain many of the art terms I found difficult, my “paintings” looked like the rejects from a parent’s refrigerator.  So far, they have all been safely curated into the backyard chimenea.   My rate of improving, if any, makes the progress of glaciers resemble a jackrabbit pursued by coyotes.  

Still, these experiments have been great fun.  My repeated failures remind me of a tiny booklet by Winston Churchill, Painting as a Pastime.  It is rather strange that this book is not more widely distributed.  I found a paperback first edition for $900, a $30 hardback copy on Amazon, or you can do what I did, read it for free at Project Gutenberg.  (I have no idea why anyone would pay $12 to Amazon for the Kindle edition when the Project Gutenberg version works perfectly on my Kindle.)

Churchill took up the hobby of painting after he resigned from the Admiralty in 1915, believing firmly that he must do something, and he wanted a change to keep his brain fresh.  As he said:

"To have reached the age of forty without ever handling a brush or fiddling with a pencil, to have regarded with mature eye the painting of pictures of any kind as a mystery, to have stood agape before the chalk of the pavement artist, and then suddenly to find oneself plunged in the middle of a new and intense form of interest and action with paints and palettes and canvases, and not to be discouraged by results, is an astonishing and enriching experience. I hope it may be shared by others. I should be glad if these lines induced others to try the experiment which I have tried, and if some at least were to find themselves dowered with an absorbing new amusement delightful to themselves, and at any rate not violently harmful to man or beast."

Churchill had a great many hobbies, besides painting:  he loved to make brick walls, even going to the extreme of joining the bricklayers’ union (though they canceled his membership when he rejoined the Conservative Party).  Churchill also raised butterflies and usually kept cats, dogs, and pigs as pets, saying that “cats look down on us and dogs look up to us, but pigs treat us as equals.”  Without a doubt, however, it was painting that gave him the most enjoyment.

During his life, Churchill created hundreds of paintings—some under his own name and others under the pseudonym Charles Marin.  He once gave a small hint why he used the pseudonym while commiserating with an artist whose work had been rejected from a show.  “Your work is very good, but unlike mine, is judged strictly on its merit.”

No one will ever mistake a work by the prime minister as a great masterpiece, but the majority of the hundred or so paintings that I was able to find online are not bad, and far better than anything I have achieved.  Still, Churchill planned on improving.  "When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject.”

In my case, it might take a tad longer.