My Early Encounters with Art
My earliest art experience that I recall was in the 2nd grade when an artist came to our class and what stood out for me was when he drew some lines on the blackboard and said it was a cube and then pointed to the lines to show how it was a representation of a three dimensional square or a box and then all of the sudden I ‘got it’ it turned into three dimensions like magic. That was a powerful experience. I started drawing.
Later when I was 13 or 14 I was looking at a book of Kandinsky’s art. I think it was the first time I had seen abstract art and I realized you could just draw anything you wanted. It didn’t need to be of anything in particular. It might have been this one or one like it… That hooked me. I started drawing lines and shapes and colors without any intended image just to see what happened.
A third experience was the first time my parents took me to the Saint Louis Art Museum and I saw the watercolor ‘Mount Fuji’ by Okamura Utarō When I first looked at it, it seemed like an abstract drawing because a lot of the white on the mountain was blank paper. I didn’t see the mountain at all because I was looking at the ink on the paper, then I read the label: ‘Mount Fuji’ and all of the sudden the image came together in my mind and I was surprised that I didn’t get it right way. It was a similar experience like seeing the cube. That left a lasting impression on me.
Talking about labels, another moment that I had was while wandering around in an antique shop in Texas as a young adult and on a wall next to the door was a long, strait thick wire bent back on itself at one end into a hook and at the other end a crude wooden handle and a tag hanging from it and I wondered ‘What the hell is that?’ I took it off the wall and held it and read the tag: ‘Chicken Catcher’. The shift in the emotion of this object going from curiosity to a sense of the sinister just from reading the tag was another memorable experience.
What all of these events have in common is that they created a shock or an unexpected surprise. That kind of experience seems important in experiencing art in a memorable way.
Here is an early musical oil painting on paper.
I glanced at an article from the Art News online magazine I receive every day about some exhibit where one lets the gallery/museum people know which art gives them chills. It reminds me of your essay about how specific art captured your attention and early influences. I remember going on a field trip with a highschool class and was deeply moved by the sculptures/assemblages of Edward Kienholz. There was this one piece I was drawn to and as a class, we were supposed to sketch one piece of any art we liked and I picked this one piece. Many years later as I was going through one of my old art sketch books, I came across this drawing I made. I was blown away as I was living in Houston, married then, and had met Edward and his wife, Nancy and realized that I was still in love with his work from all those years ago and was inspired by it. I cried when I first saw a Georgia Okeeffe painting in person as I was/am so moved by her paintings.
I find these stories so moving, Cecil, and I'm not totally sure why. I think it may have to do with the notion that our lives may go in any number of different directions, and for the most part we don't recall what sets us on the paths we take. But you can put your finger on individual moments that led you on. Superficially, the moments do not seem dramatic, and yet you were deeply touched. Seems wondrous.