Number Five: Thank you

Thank you Mr. Sargent. Thank you. I don’t know me but I know you. I was born in Los Angeles and raised in Colton, California. I started drawing when I was a kid and haven’t stopped since. I recently found out about you about a year ago. I’ve watched and rewatched your documentary. I’ve looked at over 900 of your works. How were you so prolific? How could a person produce so much work in their lifetime?

Anyways, I won’t waste too much of your time. I’ve got work to do. You, and a long list of other painters, inspire me daily. You said a few things that have stuck in my mind. You said:

“Paint a hundred studies: keep any number of clean canvases ready, of all shapes and sizes so that you are never held back by the sudden need of one. You can’t do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh.”

I stuffed my sketchbook into my backpack so I could sketch at any moment. You said

“Keep your planes free and simple”.

I slowed down and sought to gain a more disciplined understanding of planar relationships. You said:

“Stand back – get well away – and you will realize the great danger there is over overstating a tone. Keep the thing as a whole in your mind. Tones so subtle as not to be detected on close acquaintance can only be adjusted by this means.”

I stepped back and saw my errors of over-detailing and over emphasizing transition and misreading values.

You don’t know me. We never met. You were already gone 61 years before I arrived and nearly 95 years before I heard your name. You weren’t talking to me when you spoke those words but I heard them and I listened. I read the words. I worked to improve. It was difficult. I heard your training with the great painter Carolus-Duran was rigorous and intensive. I dig it. I am ashamed to admit but I struggle with bouts of heavy discouragement. Don’t know why I’m telling you this. I guess I’m trying to say this. The chance meeting of yourself and me has given me encouragement and hope to keep up my own process. To be the best version of myself that I can be. Or that I already am. Thank you for giving a poor man from Southern California a place to water his dream of becoming an artist, a vision of the possibility of living a life devoted to art.

Thank you for the tagline of your time on Earth. Simply “he painted”.

Cheers.