The completion of my first drawing in this series got me
thinking…
MANY years ago a well know Nova Scotia artist, Don Pentz,
met me as a young man. Don is a friend of my Mom and I had completed some
drawings that showed promise, so she arranged the introduction. I was shy and
uncertain of what I wanted to do in life, and approached the meeting with
something a notch or two less than optimism. I was welcomed into the artist’s
studio – I had never seen one before, and we sat by a window looking out on the
Lahave River. Don looked at my drawings. To my surprise he expressed his
surprise, noting that the work was good enough for a gallery and that while I still
had plenty to learn, he was genuinely impressed at what I had done without
training. He asked what I planned to do with my talent. Art was never something
I had been encouraged to consider as a career. My teachers saw greater things
for me and pressed their ideas home to the point where I took their vision as
my own; I answered accordingly. What Don Pentz said in response has echoed
through my life since then: “If you are an artist, you will come back to the
art and there’s nothing you will be able to do avoid it.” He gave me a brief overview
of his own life to that point as proof of his assertion. I was young and had
not the ears to hear the sage wisdom in his story, or if I did, the wits to
comprehend it.
The years that have passed since that meeting by the Lahave
held moments that I now bring to the drawing table as I “come back to the art”.
My work is richer for this in ways I may never fathom, but I can say that the
passion and energy that pull me back to the paper and pencil comes from a deep
well that I cannot ignore.
It’s a story I thought might strike a chord with some, so I
offer it... between drawings.
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