One of our daughters, Natalie, enjoys making art. She and I have been working our way (in fits and starts as any respectable artist would) through an online course (a YouTube playlist of lessons produced by an art teacher from a university in Canada who, like many, was looking for something productive to do while locked in his house during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic). The teacher recommended a couple of books in one of the early lessons. One of the books was
Art &Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of ARTMAKING
by David Bayles and Ted Orland
Ever the sucker for book recommendations, I promptly ordered the book with the noble intention of giving it to Natalie. Of course, I had to read it before passing it along to its intended owner. I thoroughly enjoyed the book (hopefully Natalie won't mind all of my underlining and writing in the margins) and was struck by the many parallels between making art and working in Global Health (or any endeavor that one cares deeply about). Some of my favorite excerpts from the book include the following:
Making art is difficult (p. 1).
In large measure, becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive (p. 3).
...talent is rarely distinguishable, over the long run, from perseverance and lots of hard work (p. 3).
Art is made by ordinary people (p. 4).
The best you can do is make art you care about- and lots of it! (p. 6).
Making art is dangerous and revealing (p. 13).
Vision is always ahead of execution- and it should be (p. 15).
Your job is to develop an imagination of the possible (p. 16).
What's really needed is nothing more than a broad sense of what you are looking for, some strategy for how to find it, and an overriding willingness to embrace mistakes and surprises along the way (p. 21).
The seed for your next art work lies embedded in the imperfections of your current piece (p. 31).
Art, after all, rarely emerges from committees (p. 37).
Each new piece of your art enlarges our reality. The world is not yet done (p. 69).
To the artist, art is a verb (p. 90).
Art that falls short often does so not because the artist failed to meet the challenge, but because there was never a challenge there in the first place (p. 94).
We have immense gratitude for all of our fellow artists and the "patrons" who support our making of art. Art in our case is that of imagining a reality in which the poor and marginalized (i.e. our patient population, a.k.a our neighbors) have access to world-class healthcare. We are committed to that very big vision and the challenges it entails. We persevere and put in the hard work recognizing that is what the vision demands and what our patients deserve.
The world is not yet done.
PS as a special bonus for reading this far, below is a sampling of Natalie's art.
PPS a special thank you to my favorite aunt, Sandy Smith, who generously provided the supplies used in Natalie's art-making
Top Photo by Anna Kolosyuk on Unsplash