My Two Loves: Painting and Writing
My First Horse, Wilhelmina; She's Another Story for Another Time
It's been a long time since I've read an actual book, let alone a novel. Mostly over recent years I've read art magazines and portions of art books, looking for answers to painting problems and information about art working methods.
So, on Friday while in Traverse City, we stopped at Books A Million, and I picked up a copy of Preet Bharara's new book, "Doing Justice" and Ernest Hemingway's "The Green Hills of Africa", a book I hadn't yet read. Eagerly I've delved into both books but with mixed satisfaction.
Preet Bharara, you may know, is the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York whom Donald Trump fired in 2017. The book tells the tales of various investigations into criminal wrongdoing at the SDNY during the seven years he headed it and his thoughts on making just decisions in the best interests of the country and those involved. I've come to like Preet very much on his numerous appearances as a guest legal expert on CNN. His low key, down to earth demeanor and wise apolitical legal pronouncements gives you that comforting feeling that he's someone you can trust. His stories are written in the same unassuming and down to earth manner.
The Hemingway book is a different matter. Back in my youth as an English Lit major in college, Hemingway was one of my favorite authors. When assigned in a Creative Writing course to write a story in the style of one author, I chose Hemingway. But so far I've been disappointed in my youthful idol. The writing is a bit ponderous with long run on sentences written in the way that one would tell a story orally.
Perhaps my feelings against trophy hunting are coloring my feelings, for this is a book that deals with hunting game in Africa, and so far there's been a lot of indiscriminate shooting for the sake of shooting. Maybe it will get better as it goes on. Sometimes books are like that.
Growing up as a horse crazy kid, reading every horse book I could get my hands on and drawing them incessantly, my big ambition was to one day write and illustrate horse books. Art as an occupation was something discouraged for reasons that are left to another time, and so I chose English Literature as my college major which promised only a marginally better way to make a living. It did help me get my first full time job, however, so there is that.
I used to read a lot of novels after college until I had kids. Then I went back to school to get a degree in commercial art. Raising kids, working part time, getting through art school and then plunging into making a career of art left me little energy or interest in reading the novels I'd loved so much earlier.
However, my interest in writing was rekindled when my mother took up writing her life stories in her final years. After she was gone, I took up the project of copying and compiling her stories on my computer. She was a good writer as was my Dad, a journalism professor who once wrote a novel. Encouraged by the possibility that good writing might be in my genes, I took a class in Life Stories a few years ago and enjoyed it very much.
These days, as I battle my way out of a creative block in art, I find myself torn between writing and painting. My life has been one more of traumas and difficulties more than of adventures, but still there are stories I'd like to tell or embellish upon into works of true fiction.
Who knows; maybe I'll write and illustrate that horse book after all.
