Picture at a Bar
Turbulence (Print sold in a bar)
A barroom acquaintance, one of the karaoke crowd, saw one of my paintings and wanted to buy a print of it. The transaction took place the following week at the bar, and she began showing it to other regulars and pointing me out as the artist.
Later that night, an older woman left her seat at the bar, made her way to my table, and introduced herself as a lover of art. Sitting beside me, she scrolled through her phone to a photo of a skillfully drawn portrait she had made many years past. “I wanted to study art,” she said, “but my father wanted me to study medicine or engineering—something practical.” These dreams never materialized. Now, decades later in a seedy karaoke bar, she leans into me and says, “I still love art.”
I suspect that most people in the world never have the chance to “follow their bliss.” Constrained by the world they are born into—family expectations, poverty, illness, abuse, racism, sexism—certain paths are rarely traveled. The luxury of doing art seems forever out of their reach. Creativity and artistic expression, however, isn’t the exclusive domain of art majors. Formal instruction shapes and hones one’s craft and artistic vision, but it is not the only path to living creatively, imaginatively in the world. However limited one’s opportunities to do art, we enrich our lives by engaging in an art or craft, or simply by appreciating what others create.
The novelist, Kurt Vonnegut, gave the following advice to young people:
“Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”
Becoming conversant with any art form expands our sense of what it means to be human. I don’t know whether my art-loving friend at the bar is still drawing, but clearly art remains a part of her life, and that is good.
Peace . . .
