I’ve been reading a biography of Andrew Wyeth. I’m sure anyone who knows me is tired of hearing about it but I’m getting a lot of inspiration out of it. His family seems pretty remarkable - his father an intellectual, passionate about high art, his siblings all incredibly intelligent and creative in their own right. His father said about art that it’s a “tangible form of reverence and love for the blessings of existence.” When I read that I had one fo those moments when you know you’ve just stumbled upon something significant, something that touches every cell in your being.
For a while now I’ve been asking myself, why libraries? It seems so obvious to myself, obvious enough that there’s no need to explain. But I’m learning that for some people there is a need to explain. This quote is my latest explanation. It’s not only an explanation for libraries, but an explanation for creating art. How else can I give back? How else can I say thank you? How else can I say I love you? I need a way to express myself and art is it. I need a way to say things, to express my gratitude and appreciation. I need to offer a tangible form of reverence and love for the blessings of existence.
So painting libraries is my way of saying how much I appreciate them, my way of expressing how valuable I think they are to society. I listened to a podcast today about Mount Vernon and George Washington’s unofficial Presidential Library. First I have to say both people involved in the interview were very knowledgable about history, specifically early American history, so that alone made it a fun interview. The podcast is Ben Franklin’s World and the episode was 33.
George Washington wanted his presidential papers preserved for the people. Today, congress recognizes that every president's papers belong to the people, but before 1955 there was no precedent for collecting, storing, and making presidential papers available to the public. George Washington was involved in so many aspects of early America and his papers help us understand that. My one regret as I listened was that his wife Martha burned all their letters before she died, so we don’t know about her role in his life. It’s hard not to wonder what they corresponded about and how she contributed to him, to his life, his outlook on things. It would be great to know more about that.
I would imagine an historical figure like George Washington had at least one comparably amazing person in his life, so why wouldn’t it have been his wife? We probably all have at least one person in our lives that’s as smart and insightful as we are. It’s all relative. And, none of us lives in a vacuum. In all the years I’ve spent looking at my character, looking at how I contribute to all the good and bad things that go on in my life, I sometimes wonder where ‘I’ even came from. Is my personality inherent? Am I my birth order? Am I a role that was available in my family, like ‘lost child’ or ‘scapegoat’?
I think about Andrew Wyeth, the youngest of five children, all led by a physically and characteristically large father, intent on leading his flock through their lives. He had them all to himself. He worked from home. It doesn’t sound like many of the kids went to school, so they were essentially under his influence, all the time. How much credit can Andrew Wyeth take for how his life unfolded? I’m in no way trying to discredit him, but he had a lot of influence.
On the flip side, my parents played a lot of tennis when I was young and pushed me a lot to play too. I can’t stand tennis and have only picked up a racket once in 30 years. So just because Andrew Wyeth’s dad was an artist didn’t mean that he was automatically going to be one too. His older brother Nathaniel Wyeth was not artistically inclined and became an engineer. But who we are, who we become and how we become it, is something to ponder. I think the people in our lives play larger roles than we give credit. For better or worse. We are a village, a community, a family, a unit.