Ancient Artist: Developing an art career after 50

Summer of Big Dreams

Summer is for dreamers.  Sitting in a hammock, or by the edge of a stream, your toes floating in the cool water, tilting your head back to watch the clouds float and change and open up the possibilities of the world...where does your mind wander?

Are you dreaming big dreams? 

Your creative life begins in dreams.  In the endless "what if?" questions that hover just beyond your reach.  What if I used that Opera Pink instead of the Permanent Rose?  What If I changed my brushwork from meticulous to broad, thick strokes?  What if I tried painting from life?  Changed my style? 

What if I approached that gallery, or submitted to that national show? 

Can you imagine your dreams like an ever expanding spiral, gently turning from the small, quiet, safe ideas into the grand, multi-colored Big Dreams? 

According to Martin S Lindauer, in Aging, Creativity, and Art, one of the benefits of Mature Age is the tendency to think more holistically, to view all experience as part of a greater whole.  Small dreams are just the lead-in for bigger dreams, bread crumbs pointing toward our unique destinies.  Of course, it will always be up to the individual to discover what that destiny might be, and to work through the challenges that come with increased risk-taking.  But if we will commit ourselves to nurturing our dreams, if we honor the internal drive that keeps us at the easel, or potter's wheel, or drawing pad, then we will manifest the lives that we dream about, recognizing...suddenly...that we've been living them all along and simply did not know it.

And if you think you're too old to dream...I would like to share a brief story about Isabel that I found in another wonderful book called Aging Artfully, 12 Profiles: Visual & Performing Women Artists Aged 85 - 105, by Amy Gorman.  Isabel was born in 1916 and has been an artist her entire life. 

            "Isabel pauses.  We share some ripe figs and cream cheese.  'Art is what interests me.'  She continues, thinking of food and art.  ' I'm the one who organizes picnics with my fine, talented friends.  Two years ago I organized one a la Manet's 'Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe,' in the Redwoods.  We made a tableau as in the painting.  Over lunch we wrote stream of consciousness poetry.  My idea was that the women wear clothes and the men not.  The men decided we were just too close to the public road - but they did take their shirts off'  (p 144)."

Life is what we make of it...the stuff dreams are made of.

                      "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
                                                                                                           - T.S. Eliot

Sunday Salon: The Three Stages of Growth

    When I was a child, all I really wanted was to grow up.  To be In Charge of myself.  I thought growth was a destination, an obtainable benchmark with smooth sailing from then on.

    And it was for many years.  Life was good.  I understood the rules and functioned fairly successfully.  Until one day I realized I had a choice.  I could stay where I was, at that benchmark.  Or I could follow the calling of my heart into unknown territory.

    I think we all feel the tug at various times in our life, the question "Is this all there is?" Sometimes, circumstances gently tell us, "Yes, it is, for now."  And then one day the answer is different. And we realize we need to grow.

    Growth evolves gradually, and in stages. 

    There is the first stage, when we are filled with the rush of exhilaration, an explorer discovering new territory hidden within ourselves.  We decide to take out that journal and start the book we'd always said we'd write.  Or spill out the box of pencils and charcoal to find just the right piece.  It's a delight to rush to the store and select new paper or canvases, as the possibilities seem endless.

    The second stage begins to creep in when we measure our work against that of others: the rush of joy and relief when we think our work is "better," and the depths of depression in the next moment when we recognize that it's not.  This is when growth becomes an obsession.  When every new book or DVD or blog or workshop  promises to supply the answer, and we struggle over mastering a style that is not our own, or speak in a voice that feels foreign to us, using words we can't understand.  It is at this point that many artists feel like giving up, myself included.  When all the things that once delighted us have now become instruments of self-inflicted torture. 

    The third stage comes when we give up our expectations.  And for many, this becomes much easier to do the older we get.  Maybe it's the sense of time flowing by so quickly we know intuitively that we must let go of how it should be and just enjoy the way it is. 

    It is at this stage when real growth occurs.  When our own style emerges, our own voice, our own success. When we finally embrace who we really are.

    If you are struggling with the second stage of growth -- and I've found that I tend to slip back and forth from the second to the third, and then back to the second -- here are some of the recent insights that have helped me.

    Close your eyes and think back to the reason you embarked on this journey.  Remember the feel of the passion your inner dream ignited.  Believe that you have within yourself the ability to live that dream.

    Then open your hands.  And let it go.

  " Rebirth is a gradual process of giving embrace and welcome to the person we really wish to be."  Marianne Williamson, The Age of Miracles: Embracing the New Midlife.

And the Question Is...

I spent the morning giving a phone interview to an author writing a book about people who change careers at mid-life. And I spent the last two days worrying about what I could say to her.

She wanted to know about my life as an artist. 

She wanted to know what the difficulties were.

What would I say to those who had been "down-sized" and were facing age discrimination, or fear, or lack of finances, who wanted to follow their life dream, or just find out what their dream was, or...

I asked myself,  when had she talked to me before?  Because her questions sounded just like myself in a past life.

I ended up telling her this:

Once I gave up my preconceived expectations, the world of opportunity opened up for me. 

Not necessarily profound.

I hope the book reads better.

As an aside, vacations are wonderful for recharging your enthusiasm and opening yourself to new experiences...like hiking in the rain.  Unfortunately, they have at least a 10 day hangover during which nothing much gets done, like checking stats on your websites, or thinking about posting to your blog, or doing anything else that's productive....sigh...my 10 days are almost up.  Thanks for being patient.  I'll be profound next week. 

Or...maybe not. 

How to Read an Art Book

    Clint Watson recently asked his blog readers to send him the titles of their favorite art books.  My first thought was "I have so many - how can I choose just one?"  But then I thought it might be more useful if I didn't send Clint my list, and just blogged about the best ways to read (or use) an art book.

    So here are my tried-and-true methods. 
  
     Art book as a door stop. This is useful for those books you don't need today, and maybe not tomorrow, either, but you aren't ready to sell them on eBay or donate them to the Library.  Depending upon the amount of ventilation (stiff breeze) through the windows, you can easily prevent the studio door from slamming shut with one or two average art books.  More than that and you risk stubbing your toe.

    Art book as a decorative item.  I like to lay my art books flat and stack them on the book shelves in my dining room.  They look very artistic that way, and I intermingle colored dishes and artsy-looking pots.  If you stand there with your head tilted to one side you can read the interesting titles.  You can't see much of the pictures on the covers, though.  However, your dinner guests are usually very impressed.

      Art book as a future reference.  You never know when an art book might actually prove valuable to you.  Take Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting by John F Carlson.  Copyright is 1929.  The first time I tried to read this book I got as far as  "The art of painting, properly speaking, cannot be taught, and therefore cannot be learned."  That, along with his true-to-the-times references to painters as "men" was enough for me to consign this book to the "door stop" category.  But I re-discovered Carlson after stubbing my toe on his book.  For the landscape artist, it contains a wealth of information.

     Art book as feng shui symbol.  Oooh, I like this one.  If you want to be famous for your art, place lots of art books in your "fame" section.  Also, place RED books in your south area.  This also helps.  And then, if you have plenty of time on your hands, you can determine which books relate best to your various other sections: the earth area could house your landscape books, your helpful people area could hold your figure drawing books, and on and on.  Endless possibilities. 

       Art book as an alternative to therapy.  There are tons of books on the market offering to help you find yourself creatively, avoid artistic depression, re-invent your artistic life, fight your artistic wars, become inspired by dead artistic people, but far and away, the absolute best book that I've read on this subject is "Creative Authenticity: 16 Principles to Clarify and Deepen Your Artistic Vision", by Ian Roberts.  Absolutely the best!

So what do you use your art books for?
      

Breaking the Glass, Continued

Last Friday I came across a thought provoking post on Seth Godin's Blog about a beautiful glass sculpture that contains a clock stopped at 0:00.  The clock is real, waiting to start ticking.  But in order to start the clock you must break the fragile glass sculpture.  That was your choice.  You have something beautifully constructed, a work of art, but time will not start unless you "break" your comfort zone and be willing to start new in the unknown. 

Seth has a way with words, and in his post he asked "analogy, anyone?"

We receive messages all the time.  Sometimes, the message is so familiar to the messages we've received in the past we "tune it out" the way our kids do when we tell them to clean their rooms. 

And sometimes a message comes through that rings such a bell of authenticity within your personal psyche that you suddenly "get it."

This is one of those messages for me.

Although it seems logical that life should proceed in a linear fashion, with one accomplishment leading naturally into the next, more often it becomes a spiral.  Each rotation of "learning" comes back to the starting point and we are faced with the choice of standing there admiring our beautiful glass sculpture or breaking the glass.

Starting that clock requires that we "break" with the past, or safety, or the comfort zone we've created.  Maybe, like me, there is fear beneath the hesitancy.  What do I risk if I do this?

But turn the question around and ask yourself, what have I compromised in order to keep this security?

If you have compromised your artistic dreams, then you have no other choice but to lift that hammer.

The Indisputable Creative Advantage of Older Artists

When I owned my business, there was a rule everyone accepted: If you survived five years, you were successful.  Try to get credit, or open an account , and you could hear the tension:  how long have you  been in business?  Always followed by relief when told five, ten, or eighteen years.  Time, it seemed, was the primary predictor of success.

According to AGING, CREATIVITY, AND ART, A Positive Perspective on Late-Life Development, by Martin S. Lindauer,  this rule holds true for artists, too.

I discussed Lindauer's findings in an earlier post titled The Seven Characteristics that Distinguish Older Artists over their Younger Peers, and I wanted to follow up with more encouraging conclusions.

The statistics Lindauer used were gathered by art historians looking at artists from the past who had created masterpieces.  The data included working lifespan, when masterpieces were created in relation to death, and reflected activity from the past few centuries.  A second data set included women,  and finding artists working closer to the modern age, the last 100 years or so. Earlier assumptions about creativity being a "young man's game" had been based on research flawed in Lindauer's opinion, because it revealed that artists "peaked" in their late 20's or 30's, without considering lifespan (most of the artists died in their late 40's or very early 50's).  When research expanded to include artists with longer lifespans, something interesting emerged.

"Bursts of creative activity varied for 45 well-known artists; peaks were found in nearly every decade of their lives: in youth, middle-age, and old age.  Despite differences between individual artists, creative output generally occurred relatively later in life than earlier; and creative productivity continued into old age in nearly all cases.  Youth is therefore not the only or even the predominant period in which creative productivity was maximized (pp 123)."

I like that: "Youth is therefore not the only or even predominant period in which creative productivity is maximized."

So youth is not a pre-condition to becoming a successful artist.

But the amount of time spent creating art is.

And what does this mean for the Ancient Artist?

The older you are, the longer you've been painting.

And the longer you paint, the better you get.

Indisputable.

Imagine.  What could you do if you knew that you had at least one "peak" ahead of you, and if you exercise and eat right, there's the possibility of two?

I'm heading to the kitchen right now for some  broccoli to eat with my coffee.

Here are some interesting sites mined from my bookmarks. 

Creative Aging's Blog

edward_ winkleman

New York Art News

My Conversations with Slump

I have not been writing much this week.  In fact, I have been torturing myself with thoughts that I must be blocked, or perhaps the "slump" subject that has been moving around from blog to blog has settled down in mine and set up housekeeping for the duration. 

"Why are you here?" I've been asking Slump. "Aren't you really depression in disguise?"

I mean, depression is a great excuse.  I could whine (or whatever.)  I could open that new bottle of wine and drink it by myself, waving my glass to the beat of the jazz CD I always listen to when I'm in that mood.  I could stare at some of my recent paintings and wonder aloud why no one is interested in buying them when they really are damn good.  I could remember that I've been reading Eckhart Tolle, and when he talks about shedding the egoic nature and returning to the nothingness my head starts to ache, and then my neck. 

I guess that's what happens when you get a little information.

And I've been thinking a lot about how a little information can actually send you off on the wrong track.  Or around the bend.  Off the deep end.  Into the...you get my drift.  Questions like the reason we're here are too deep for this blog.  What I do know, or think I know, is that my internal experience, when I am painting, comes the closest to what I imagine Eckhart Tolle might be talking about when he speaks of the awareness of Being, outside of the ego.  I have no idea whether what I experience even comes close to what the spiritual teachers believe.  Might I be reckless enough to ask, "Should it matter?" 

Artists are very familiar with the experience of being "in the zone." Of finding yourself in a place where there is a connection between canvas, brush, hand, mind, heart, and perhaps something else.  Ego is not present in those moments.  Ego only comes into the room when the moment is past, when the painting is drying, or the words written in last week's post have been passed around from blog to blog.  When the action has been taken and cannot be recalled, and Ego is ready to inject emotion, insecurity, defensiveness, and self-inflicted pain along with his best pals Slump and Depression.

Should it matter that I struggle with ego, when -- in the moment that I complete a painting -- there is great inner peace? 

I'm going to need a lot more information. 

"So why are you still here?"  I ask, watching as Slump hands the bowl of chips over to Depression, who passes because he hasn't been able to eat for days.

I see their mouths moving.  Slump can't seem to get comfortable.  Ego has launched into what could be a tirade as his face is turning red. But I can't hear them. 

I don't know.  Maybe I've made a little progress toward Enlightenment. 

Maybe I'm going deaf.

Like I said, a little information can really be a dangerous thing. 

Have You Discovered Your Hidden Support System?

I spent most of yesterday gathering up the courage to call my photographer and set an appointment to bring in the ten new works on paper that I've been staring at for the past few months.  When I finally called, he answered on the first ring.

Yes, he remembered me.  And how did those photographs he took a year and a half ago work out for me?

Very well, I politely told him, and could he possibly have some time today or tomorrow.

Yes. He could.  So I was stuck, committed.  I kept telling myself that all I was doing was getting professional shots taken of pieces that proved too difficult for me to shoot, with their reflective surfaces and subtle colors.  It wasn't like I had to follow through on anything else, like sending them off to that juried event with the deadline in two weeks.   

I do this to myself on a regular basis, I realize, having no legitimate reason to feel so insecure.  But that seems to be the nature of my particular creative beast.  Give me a compliment or accept me into some organization and immediately the tiny voice in my head starts crowing over the imminent discovery that I am, yes, an artistic fraud. 

But he is expecting me.  We have a nice visit, I leave the work with instructions to return today. 

What can I say?  The meeting today was wonderful. Not because he thought the work was so fantastic that he couldn't breathe -- no.  I think it was because he's also an artist, working on his own version of that creative dream.  We were two creatives meeting where our paths crossed, and paused to share a moment of encouragement and support.  He told me how he had started doing stock photography; his wife called while we were talking to share the news that one of his images had earned a "Flame."  (Apparently, when an image has been downloaded 100 times, it earns a flame.)  We talked about the art market in general and artists we both knew, how everyone was feeling the slowdown and looking for answers.  Then he sat me down in front of his computer and we collaborated on the presentation of my images, while he instructed me on some new tips and tricks in Photoshop, and how to save the files on my desktop.

When I left two hours later I couldn't understand why it had been so difficult for me to make that initial call.   

Creating art is often an isolating experience. At times, we might forget that others are feeling equally isolated.  Our fears keep us from opening up to the very people who understand exactly where we're coming from, and we miss opportunities to discover our hidden support systems.  Yes, there are scary parts to success and to failure that isolation magnifies,  but just beyond that studio door there are hundreds of hidden sources of creative support.  We are not on this journey alone. 

Believe it.

The Seven Characteristics that Distinguish Older Artists over their Younger Peers

I went back to college when I was 51.  I sat in chairs designed for the young, next to my fellow students who were also...well, young.  Adding insult to injury, I needed tutoring -- from the young -- to learn the new technology that these kids in their late teens and twenties grew up with and used as casually as I once used the rotary phone.

It was culture shock.  But more than that.  It was the shock of realizing I was rapidly approaching the gray realm of Old Age.  My first small encounters with...ageism.

Ageism is insidious in that it is so acceptable.  Logical.  It is also based -- at least with regard to late-life creativity -- on scientific research that reinforces traditional views about aging and the mental and physical decline models.

Even when it comes to "creativity" -- something that can't be touched, tested, or accurately measured, let alone understood --  the scientific community  still relies on research that is "objective" and "measurable" -- sort of like trying to catch a fish with your hands.  The easiest one to grab becomes the archetype for the "Creative Old Guy."

But I recently started reading a book by Martin S. Lindauer, titled AGING, CREATIVITY, AND ART, A Positive Perspective on Late-Life Development.

This is a very recent book, with a copyright date of 2003, and reads like a research paper with numerous citations.

It is still worth the effort.

Because here is the good news.  According to Lindauer,  new research reveals that over time, creative people increase both the quality of their artistic output, and the quantity, over their lifetimes, with productivity peaking during their 60's, but the quality of the output remaining steady at the lifetime highs well into the 70's.

Even for artists working in their 80's, their quality ratings were higher -- get that, higher! -- than when  they were in their 20's and 30's.

How can this be?   

According to Lindauer, there are seven characteristics that distinguish "old artists and late art from young artists and youthful efforts." 

• "Older artists have more knowledge and are less career oriented.
• "They also have less energy - the only case where older artists were at a disadvantage to younger ones..."
• "...which they compensated for with greater maturity, concentration, and self-acceptance."
• "Older artists were also less critical than their younger counterparts."
• "However, in two areas, creativity and experimentation, older artists were seen as equal to younger practitioners." (2003, pp.187-188)

Further, while discussing the age at which an artist's "Old Age Style" might emerge, Lindauer wrote, "...the 60-year-old artists, and many of the 70-year-olds who were studied, were 'too young' to have an old-age style."

Re-read that last part again: even the 70-year-olds were too young to have an old age style!

Sometimes the challenges of reinventing yourself at mid-life can seem so daunting that you want to give up.  I know that for me, discouragement became my constant companion to the point where I nearly gave up on the whole "career" idea, caught up in my fear of having "missed the creative boat."

But knowing that, at 60, I am still decades away from having an "Old Age Style" has renewed my energy, sending me back out into the creative world with rekindled optimism.

I hope to see  you all there!

 

What does Jill Bolte Taylor and the Brain have to do with being an artist?

Some mornings, I spend way too much time on the computer.  But not today.  Today, I clicked my way through a labyrinth of sites and ended up at one of the best examples of what this modern technology is all about -- www.TED.com  (Technology, Entertainment, and Design).  Now, I know there are plenty of sites out there in the blogosphere churning out information that is, at best, mildly interesting, and at worst,  repetitive or time-wasting.  But the conference talk given by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor at TED 2008 and posted on TED Talks! is definitely worth the 19 minutes of your time.  In fact, I practically guarantee that you won't stop there. 

What I found so compelling about Jill Bolke Taylor's description of the massive stroke she experienced, "as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one," is her ability to describe "how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another."  The ideas Ms. Taylor articulates are of particular interest to artists, and if you have ever wondered why you are an artist, and why it is vitally important that you remain an artist and share your insights with the world, perhaps this video will provide some insight.