I was reading this Sallie Tisdale essay about writing and teaching writing and I quote it here with the idea that the same, THE SAME thoughts can go to art:

A recent textbook says: “For your writing to improve, you must learn to read like a writer”. I believe it would be better to write like a reader. Most of what I know about writing I know from reading – but reading whole, as a reader reads, lost and unfettered, wandering into another’s world without a jaded eye. Wandering free of all jaded things is part of the joy of reading; how dare anyone take it away? We can surrender to a master of rhetorical sophistication without need to wonder how or why. Maybe literature lives only in the reader – born in the changing life, a different story for each person who reads it…”

WHEW! I love that. … “unfetterred…without a jaded eye…” Their own image for every viewer.

I was just at the opening for my show at the Chocolate Church in Bath, Maine, and my work was shown alongside the work of two younger artists who are just freshly out of school. The subject of education came up and how one of the artists almost didn’t “make it” through the process. Thank goodness she wasn’t totally discouraged. Thank goodness I got to enjoy her vibrant work that is part of the show there now.

I don’t want to sound against art school. Like many things, there are two sides. And the side I’m on is always the side that keeps that love of art alive, whatever path that takes.