I’ve been long attracted to creative types: artists, actors, writers, poets, sculptors. And, the more eccentric the better!
I guess it comes from growing up in a repressed environment — a typically German family, high on rules, low on nurturing. The folks who put fun in FUNdamentalist.
When you’re the odd man out — a right-brain, brash, vocal kid in a group of rigid, repressed, introverts harbouring the secrets of the universe — you develop a yearning to break out, to rebel. Except when I was growing up in 1950’s Alberta, finding ‘Artists” wasn’t easy.
Remember, these were the days of Bible Bill Abehardt. Kids were expected to wear dress pants and white shirts to school. My oh times have changed. Driving home today, past the high school my best buddy attended, I saw a young lady wearing (if you can call it that) a skirt that left nothing unmentioned about her unmentionables. Why oh why didn’t she go to my high school?
Anyway, in my youth the Artistic pursuits were not valued, yet alone considered a career option. Men worked with their hands. And, earned bread with the sweat and hard labour. You learned to write so you could carry on commerce not so you could express yourself, your passion, or your dreams. And, in my religion, the church taught you to speak, not so you could be a terrific orator, inspire others, or teach. But, so you could preach the gospel and convert all of “them”.
Yet inside I was an “Artist”.
So, finally in my 30’s a early mid-life crisis brought to the begining of my Journey back to My Self. And, since then in working to find myself I’ve worked to help other creatives find themselves — and create a meaningful life based on using their talents, all of them, to their fullest extent!
So, what’s an “Artist”?
A man (me) burning in the bones, driven to write and teach. Some of my clients: A woman who’s passion is to make a difference by helping people learn to end the pain in their lives. A man who learned that success came from being himself not from trying to be the next Tony Robbins. A woman who was helped to find a way to turn her love of the beauty in everyday life into a career as a jewellery designer.
“Artists” are passionate, quirky, multi-talented, obscene, unconventional, irreverant, dreamers, wacky, bold, obnoxious, complicated, moody – and, driven to do their “work”, whatever that is.
You’ll find them pursuing careers as poets, writers, artists, illustrators, sculptors, photographers, broadcasters, and a myriad of other careers that call for creative thinking, imagination, and design skills.
I think it was Kermit the Frog who said, “It ain’t easy being Green!”
Well, in our left-brain, money centric culture, “It ain’t easy being an Artist”!
But, where would be with out the art of Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Picasso. The writings of Twain, Joyce, and Faulkner. The music of Bethoven, Bach, and Mozart. The sculptures of Rodin, Botteceli, and Michelangelo. The movies of Chaplin, Kubrick, and Speilberg.
Art feeds our dreams, our hearts, and our soul.
So, please feed our Artists!
