When I Paint My Masterpiece

In the Fall of 1973, after my sophomore year at Utica College, I transferred to Bard College. I think I'd wanted to go to Bard in the first place, after visiting Fred there when he was a freshman and I was still a senior in high school, in the Spring of 1970, but in the midst of the personal and global chaos at that time, I did not get it together and wound up applying to Utica at the last minute, in August 1970, as an.....Urban Studies Major. Long story short, my father saw an ad in the Sunday Times soliciting applicants and really engineered the whole thing. (Needless to say, I was the only white person with that major).

I eventually found my bearings there and did pretty well. (After leaving Urban Studies). Made some good friends too. Then I somewhat abruptly pulled up stakes and left Utica behind. I don't even remember making the decision to leave. It just happened. Could have been those brutal Mohawk Valley winters; maybe just the bleakness of that particular city at that time.

In any case, Bard was certainly more beautiful, and by a fluke of demographics, the female to male student ration was nearly 2:1 while I was there. (Different story).

Another nice aspect was that a bunch of my very good friends from Hartsdale/Ardsley, who had formed an excellent band called Skywheel, had set up housekeeping nearby in Elizaville. I hung out with them quite a bit, and one interesting detail of that scene was that in addition to all the singing and playing and songwriting, a bunch of the guys were (and still are) exceptionally fine painters.

So a much-loved winter afternoon activity was to all set up our easels and crack out the brushes and oil paints, put on some music, smoke a bit if we had any, and just get deep into the brush strokes. I had no painting skills at all, mind you, but I did absorb some basics from the rest of the group, and I turned out some abstract color storms that weren't entirely awful.

What made it so profoundly pleasant for me was that I had no pretensions about being an actual painter, so I was free to paint almost as freely as a child. The other pay-off - which took a while to sink in - was that even at my rudimentary skill level, I was now able to look at paintings and appreciate how much it took to create a good one, let alone a great one.

Which is why I'm so happy that my children have grown up knowing that art in all its forms - including cooking and gardening, of course  - is made by flesh-and-blood people, and that the more they themselves are involved in acts of creation, even if only for their personal amusement, the more they'll be able to comprehend and enjoy all the art that's out there.

And who knows where that might lead them.