An Early Artist

A few weeks ago, three children came to the upstairs lobby accompanied by their mother to sell girl scout cookies. As I enjoyed my delicious thin mints, I spied two of the kids drawing. The unquestioning confidence with which they put pencil to paper grabbed my attention. It wasn't like they were being over critical, and conversely, they weren't treating their drawings as being precious. For them, it was all about the enjoyment. How could this be?

I tried thinking way back to what I first drew: spaceships, cartoon characters from TV -- similar stuff to what these kids were drawing. I remember sketching with the same confidence, using imagination, playing around and having fun. Somewhere along the line some of that was lost. I feel as though I'm questioning my own ability so much that I can't possibly create anything worthwhile, and find myself not enjoying the process.

Can a 'hunger artist' such as myself harness the passion these children seem to naturally possess? I know that I once did:



The image here is one of my brother and me playing with legos when we were younger. In those years we would create countless impressive creations of our own design. Back then, there was nothing more enjoyable than playing with logos, filming our own movies, even creating stop-motion animations. We were playing around.


My brother and I creating one of our legendary snow forts.


Me crafting something in the wood shop in the basement.

Then the idea came, "what if I could do this sort of thing for a living? Wouldn't that be the greatest job in the world?" True, it was a distant dream, and I had no idea how to actually make it happen, but it was there all the same -- floating in the back of my mind.