Top, Millet, bottom, Van Gogh.

One of the things we artists have to deal with is the admonition from parents and friends that we’re not supposed to copy. In their minds, all art has to be altogether original or it’s somehow fraudulent.

What they mix up are the concepts of originality with that of craft. In many ways the former can’t be taught, but the latter must be. In fact, originality without craft is generally not very impressive.

So, how do you learn if you don’t copy?

Tell me any other field where this is not absolutely expected. I would hope my doctor learned his art from a whole host of other doctors before he starts getting original on me.

So do we think we’re somehow guilty of forgery if we take some other painting and copy it? Ok, if we try to sell it as if it were that original, that’s illegal, but that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is for the sake of learning. And if someone does want to buy it, then you sign it with both your names, like “Hyatt, after Van Gogh.”

Vincent Van Gogh copied a number of other artists, by the way, like his idol, Jean-Francois Millet. As I think about it, he didn’t include Millet’s name with his in the signature. But then his was different enough. He was learning from Millet but applying his own approach too.

And that’s how it almost always is. You learn from another by copying another, but in the end, it’s still you. In can hardly be otherwise. As much as you are different than anyone else, so will be your work.

In the meantime, know that the masters copied their masters, and you should do it to. It’s true in all the arts, and everything else. You’ll get better faster.

Without it you can hardly get started.

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When I first started painting I wanted to stop everything and go back to school. The amusing thing is that, after many years of part time studying and class taking, I was just completing a masters degree . . . in a whole different area (“Leadership!”). But no matter, art had hit, and as Vincent Van Gogh once wrote to brother Theo, “Art rather takes over.”

But, I was still mega-involved in my full life. I hardly had time to paint, much less go back to school. Nor, for the moment, could I even find a class in any local community college that fit my schedule or interest or my particular level. So, what to do?

Then I remembered the library.

Of course. The library! Thank you Ben Franklin for thinking of it. And thank you county elders for putting one in my town.

Actually they’re easy places to get lost in, forests of every tree imaginable and engrossing paths between with fellow discoverers quietly probing or whispering. Full of wonder.

For books on art I just look for the oversize section, with pictures.

Besides the historical stuff, there’s plenty for beginners. At first I just needed to know what color to make a shadow. “Blue,” I learned. (That’s simplistic, shadow color being complex physics; but it got me started.)

Besides the introductory sources, I also checked out books on the masters. Why not be inspired by those at the same time?

The beautiful thing about books is that everything that’s been learned is in them. AND it’s generally EXPERTS who are writing them. These are the people to learn from . . . not just anybody, the ones who have something to say! Why not take advantage?

Furthermore, with a book, you can skip around, searching out the answer to your specific question. It’s a great way to take charge of your own education!

So, it was another discovery of how to learn anything new, mid-life, in the midst of a full schedule and with no classes available anyway.

Nor does this even consider the availability of Internet and the endless availability of material, including free demonstrations by artists of every level. It’s all knowledge free for the taking.

So, get out your library card and open your brain. It’s free. And it’s fun.

It’s not too late to order It’s About Life as a great gift. But do it now. Just $14.95, or $29.90 for three. Shipping’s free. For further info click here.

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One secret to make work go better, more enjoyable, and likely more productive, is to see it as play. It’s the mindset that changes everything. And why not? It’s in our minds that we live.

When we were young we had to ask permission to go out and play. Then we grew up and “Go to work” became the command. Maybe we should turn it around. “Can I go to work?” “Yes, go out and play!”

A lot has been written on the role of play on the job for the sake of creativity and coming up with new ideas. I’m talking about the individual at his desk toying with things, spinning out new ideas, experimenting, testing new approaches . . . with or without other people involved.

When I first started painting I told myself that with this endeavor to always have fun. I’m not saying I’ve always remembered that bit of self counsel, but I know some painters that never do.

It’s not as easy as it seems. It’s the non-painter who exults in how relaxing painting must be. But painters know that often it’s painting that builds stress, and the only way to relax is to stop!

So it can be with any kind of work . . . at least any kind that requires mental challenge or some measure of achievement in quality (and what isn’t that?). The best way to lighten the load is to determine at the outset to have fun.

When we do the work goes better, the time goes faster, new approaches appear. We’re of better countenance and we’re not in a big hurry to quit.

Likely when you’ve been at your best you were also having the most fun.

How do we get there? Make a decision at the start.

It’s in our minds that we live. We might as well be good company.

___________

Don’t forget to order It’s About Life, for you, or as a great gift. Just $14.95, or $29.90 for three. Shipping’s free. For further info click here.

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Painting is a solitary craft. So are a lot of things. But we’re not made to be alone. At least not always. We need to find a way to bring some society into our work.

It’s for this I recommend you look for a group to be part of. This is for the sake of the work itself, but more, to have someone to talk with about it.

It wasn’t too long after I started painting that a friend from the office learned of it and was interested. He said he used to paint, but then got busy. What likely really happened was that he wasn’t painting with anybody else, or wasn’t around anyone else who put any importance on painting. But when he saw that I was doing it, he brightened.

So I said, Why don’t we do it together? And he loved the idea.

By then I was painting every day, at least for an hour, in my garage. But as he lived closer to the office, we opted for his garage, after work, once a week. In time others learned of what we were doing and joined us.

We called ourselves, “The Latent Painters,” all of whom had painted for periods before but the energy had run out. And why had the energy run out? Because the fellowship had run out, or had never been.

As it was, we had a great time. Being right after work, we always had a bit of dinner together, very simple. We always had music playing. And we talked, or we didn’t talk. Each of us were intent on our own canvas. It wasn’t about teaching or even influencing. Some of that happened, naturally, but it wasn’t what it was designed for. Mainly it was just for the fellowship. People of like interest were sharing their interest together.

In time we even put on a little show . . . at the office. We set out our paintings and invited people to come by over their coffee break. It was very amateur, but so what? It was fun for everybody, and everybody came away with the idea that they could go out and do likewise.

Not necessarily to paint, for only a few were painters, but something. We can’t do everything alone . . . or even anything alone for very long. We need a fellowship. And it may be up to us to form one.

It’ll help you. It’ll help others.

Don’t dry up. Water others.

___________

Don’t forget to order It’s About Life, for you, or as a great gift. Just $14.95, or $29.90 for three. Shipping’s free. For further info click here.

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Page 1 of an early sketchbook, 1996.

That was a piece of advice I gave myself when I first started painting. Just get into it and enjoy the process. And don’t expect too much too early; it only discourages. Growth is incremental. We hardly see it.

When I first started painting, I painted in sketchbooks. That was with oil paint! Crazy, I know; oil paint dies slow; you can’t even turn the page. But that’s what I did. My reason? I wanted to keep it all informal, unimportant, and only for practice. I didn’t buy a canvas for a long time. Painting on a stretched canvas seemed too much like “making a painting.” And I wasn’t ready to make a painting; I wanted to just paint.

Whatever your particular new interest is, I recommend this approach.

Don’t go out and buy all the equipment necessary, the wardrobe, the rented space. All that will do is keep you busy and you may even feel like you’re “doing it.” But it’s a deception.

Just get painting.

Or writing.

Or learning.

Or serving.

Or whatever it is that’s on your heart to do.

The reason you haven’t done it yet is because you haven’t started.

And you haven’t started because you’ve made it too important. Too scary. Don’t you know the hardest step on a thousand-mile trek is the first one?

The results of your labors won’t be grand for a long time. But they won’t be anything at all if you don’t start.

So, whatever your art, whatever your contribution . . . to yourself or to others: Don’t worry about the masterpiece; that’ll come later, much later. For now, just get painting!

Whatever happens, it’ll happen because of that.

___________

Don’t forget to order It’s About Life, for you, or as a great gift. Just $14.95, or $29.90 for three. Shipping’s free. For further info click here.

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Click here to order. Note free shipping and discount for multiple copies.

I met a man who, as far as I could tell, had reached the height of his success. He was recently retired, with plenty of money in the bank. He built a house, a very fine one, on a promontory with a view to die for. He took his family on expansive trips. He kept up small interests, but apparently lost track of larger ones. As a secret to all but those closest to him, he took to drinking. In time (and not very much time) it killed him.

He wasn’t the first of my friends to die of liver failure.

The other was my friend Hugh from college days. Hugh was my older, intellectual mentor. Our long late-night talks were filled with wide-ranging topics, and always spiced with gin and tonic. I was underage and he had money. He bought the gin, I bought the tonic. We mixed the drinks 90/10 (to save on the tonic).

As I’ve mentioned before, I eventually discovered new light and moved on. Hugh never did. Years later, I heard how he died in a hospital back East. They’d offered him one more dire measure but he turned it down. He said he’d not been able to come up with a reason for living yet and couldn’t think of one now.

Seems his liver failure had to do first with a failure in living.

In both of the cases above, money was not a problem; there was plenty of it. Or maybe that was the problem.

Not that money is the reason we live. But the arrival at any of our goals can have a downside. Without reasons, we can find ourselves quite without purpose, direction or energy.

With or without hitting the bottle, it begins to kill the liver in us.

Speaking of reasons, I just came across a book on my shelf, Reason for Being, A Meditation on Ecclesiastes, by the French intellectual, Jacques Ellul. I read it years ago, twice. It’s all about the deeper things.

Which reminds me to remind you about my book, It’s About Life. Mine is a lighter touch on Ecclesiastes than Ellul’s but addresses topics that meet us every day. (And includes drawings from life’s sketchbook.)

There are lots of reasons for being. Don’t let yourself be without.

It’ll kill the liver.

(Sorry, this didn’t start out to be an informercial. But I know you would enjoy the book, as well as your friends. You can order them here.)

____________

PS. My recent talk on “It’s About Life” is HERE.

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It’s been a custom around many a Thanksgiving meal I’ve been at to follow it with each person present naming one thing he or she is grateful for. Though such exercise need not be relegated only to Thanksgiving, that day in particular seems lacking if nothing happens.

And it need not be just a word, but a sentence, or a paragraph, expounding on that word.

Or if one word is too hard, find ten. Ten little things you’re thankful for. Since breakfast!

It shouldn’t be hard. And if it is, it’s all the more reason to practice.

Happiness and gratitude have everything to do with each other.The happier a person is, the more likely he’s going to be grateful. And the more grateful, the happier.

Gratitude expressed completes the circle. Unexpressed, there’s something still unfinished. Possibly painfully so.

Even the Lord, the giver of all, feels the lack. The story goes where ten lepers called out for healing from their quarantined distance. Jesus merely told them to go to the priests. (It was the priests who would pronounce a leper “clean” and fit again for society.) They all went off, experiencing their healings along the way. Only one returned—the non-Jew (having no priest?) thanking and deeply praising God for his newness of life. Jesus wondered at the thoughtlessness of other nine.*

Like I said, without the thanks, the good that’s been done is not quite complete.

So when you pray, open your eyes, and give thanks for everything you see.

It only follows: You will have a happy day.

________________
*     Luke 17:11-19
PS  I gave a talk last Sunday, an overview of Ecclesiastes, containing some good bits to be grateful for. If you’d like to listen, click here.

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I was no more than 5, which would have made my brother 3, when my mother decided it was time for us to have an allowance. Knowing her, it was more to learn about money than to start saving for college (though she thought about that too).

The allowance would be a dime, paid weekly, in pennies. That’s because from the outset, we were to tithe.

She supplied small jars; one was for God, the other, everything else.

I’d like to think that I wasn’t concerned that now I only had nine cents, but I probably was. Nor do I remember wondering why God would need anything at all when he already owns everything. Or how my one penny per week was going to make much of a dent.

No matter; it was part of the stipulation.

And it stuck. That is, when the allowance came at all. She’d get behind, and things being what they were, it was hard to catch up. But whenever it happened, the ten percent principle was always part of it.

As time went by it was ten cents out of every dollar, then a dollar out of ten. When I started earning bits of money, it was ten dollars out of every hundred, and so on.

Where the money would go was up to me. The church offering plate was an obvious one. But even in my rebellious years, when I turned my back on church, the principle was engrained and I found causes that could use my ten percent.

Skip ahead though a whole lifetime of interacting with money one way or another every day. Early in our marriage Anne and I set up a separate checking account called “tithe.” Money goes there first, even if we don’t yet know where it will be given. Options are always arising, and it’s nice, when they do, to already have something set aside.

It’s the same with cash. In my wallet I have a separate section where ten percent of any folding money is already cordoned off, ready for the spontaneous moment when I see a need.

I’m not saying any of this to brag; please don’t take it that way. The fact is, I’ve never made a lot of money, but I’ve never gone broke. I pay for my cars with cash. My children all went through college without debt. We live in a fine house. And we always seem to have enough for what we want to do. And that’s on ninety percent!

It’s a great principle: Let your money go and it looses its hold on you.

It also comes back.

It’s pennies to heaven, something my mother instilled at an early age.

And to any who have not yet discovered its wisdom, I know what she would say: “It’s never too late to start!”

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Dad, hours after Mom died, wiping a tear, something I’d never seen. Behind is Adelene, the 24-hour caregiver from Belize who we’ve all come to depend on.

We buried my mother on Friday, a week after she died. It’s not that I want to belabor the theme here, though I would wish, when my time comes, it merits more than a passing mention. For you too.

We had a marvelous memorial, following a graveside service. My brother, a retired pastor, gave a message at the graveside, following his soulful harmonica rendition of Amazing Grace. The pastor of my parents’ church also spoke. At one point he asked what example of grace had we seen my mother manifest. I volunteered, “She forgave me.” That, he summarized, said it all.

It was a very Christian service. The funeral director told me after, of all he sees, this one was inspiring. Too bad he didn’t follow us to the luncheon that followed where friends and family took their turns giving brief memories of Mom and her unique character. There were as many laughs as tears. Her legacy was apparent, not just in the stories, but in values instilled in her offspring . . . and theirs.

My father didn’t make it to either of the services. He’s almost immobile now, speaks very slowly if at all, and seem ready to join my mother any time. With her gone, it’s like he really hasn’t any further reason to hang around. Happily, after both of the above mentioned services, some 30 or more came over to the house, greeted him, then stayed the rest of the day. Being in the same house I grew up in, it seemed like so many Sunday afternoons when my mother would invite anybody and everybody who would come over after church to just be with each other.

The day of death is better than the day of birth.* That’s a verse from Ecclesiastes, the kind of which I’ve already written on and now has a place in my new book.** We quote it as some sort of vague consolation, or even “weird” consolation. A birth is a celebration, a death a mourning. So how is it better? Except that at the beginning there’s nothing, just a bundle of potential that could go either way. At the end, however, there’s much to celebrate, to acknowledge and, as I said, a heritage to continue.

By the way, I’ll be speaking on Ecclesiastes at my church Sunday after next. It’ll be upbeat; I’ll mix the positive in with the ponderings.***

But for now, before rushing on with the “next” of our lives, I wanted to take one more moment to acknowledge Mom. Dad’s next. After that, before long, me and you.

Live well.

__________________

*      Ecclesiastes 7:1b
**   It’s About Life, available here.
*** Heritage Christian Fellowship, San Clemente, 11/24/13, 9:00 & 11:00.

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Mom, before she was one, with her man.

My mother died on Friday. She was just shy of her 95th birthday. It was in her sleep, the perfect way to go, since it has to happen somehow.

I confess I’m taking something of a philosophical view. The promise of long life as reward for obedience to parents was moving to the extreme. She must have been a very obedient daughter.

And from what I’ve heard, that wasn’t always easy. My mother overcame a whole lot of unhelpful influence from her upbringing.

I’ve sometimes thought that we spend half our adulthood unlearning half of what we learned growing up. I won’t go into details to undermine the reputation of my grandmother; she always liked me so it was easy to like her back. But I will say my mother’s distinctive positive attributes were apparently in diametric contrast to what she’d had modeled.

A people lover to the extreme, Mom never met someone she didn’t treat like she’d not known for a long time. Once, when stuck for hours in an Arizona airport because of some system delay, Dad told me later that she was in her glory, talking to anyone and everyone, finding out things in common, chance mutual acquaintances, and just anything interesting. And what isn’t interesting?

And hospitable? Entertaining strangers was never strange for her. Once, when Dad got pulled over and ticketed for speeding by a lady-cop, Mom struck up a conversation that touched on the personal. Turned out the lady was living with her boyfriend and my mother asked why she didn’t get married. The policewoman said marriage is just a piece of paper. Mom came back with, “Well, this ticket is just a piece of paper!”

But that wasn’t the end of it. Mom learned that the woman was driving a great distance to come to work. Mom offered their guest room so she could sleep at their house weeknights and just to go home on weekends. That lasted for about a year, rent free.

As I understand it, Mom’s mother didn’t particularly like people, and never had company.

So, the stories we’ll be gathering to tell and hear later this week won’t just be stellar, but double so, for what she had to unlearn.

And as for living so long, what with my dad still being with us at 97, I suppose I have good genes. But I’m not so sure I was always as obedient to parents, so the promise may not hold.

We’ll see.

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