I was transported back to Mrs. A’s classroom, where Gaviota, my first true love, sat beside me, herself a gifted artist. We were young and certain of our calling. Mrs. A gave her advanced students carte blanche access to materials and reference books. It was in her classroom that I was first exposed to the works of Otto Dix, Dalí, and others who unsettled and expanded my sense of what art could be. She trusted us with freedom. We drew from plaster casts, from photographs, from life. We experimented boldly, confident that art would be both our vocation and our inheritance.
When graduation approached, I naively rejected sound advice to apply for stable city jobs. I was anti-materialistic, full of ideals, and romantic about the life of a starving artist. I did not yet understand how corrupt, cutthroat, and degenerate the art world could be. Reality came slowly. I found steady employment as a graphic designer—honest work, useful work—but it never replaced the deeper hunger for life drawing and painting.
Disenchanted and disgusted with the industry, I shamefully drifted from my craft. I allowed disappointment to dissuade me. Though I remain in contact with Mrs. A—an influential and heroic figure in my life—I sometimes feel I failed her by not realizing my full potential as an artist. She never imposed that burden; I placed it upon myself.
Yet I never lost my love for art. It endures, undiminished. It is one of the reasons I devote so much attention to art on the blog. I cannot visit museums and galleries enough. Each time I step into a quiet hall and stand before a painting or sculpture, I feel the same wonder I knew as a boy—discovering beauty as if for the first time.
Perhaps this is how I have remained faithful to that earlier self. If I did not become the artist I once imagined, I have at least remained a devoted pilgrim—returning again and again to the wellspring, drawing from it, and inviting others to look more closely.
~ By Giovanni di Napoli, March 2nd, Feast of San Luca Casale da Nicosia
