When I was little, an uncle gave me a subscription to National Geographic. I recall he had every issue from the beginning, and those bright yellow bookshelves were an invitation to a fascinating, incredibly beautiful yet often terrible and complex world well beyond my comfortable experience. There was good, bad, and ugly out there, and I very much wanted to see and explore it. National Geo wouldn’t make anyone an expert but it certainly did inspire a thirst for learning.
I loved the photography, the maps, the illustrations; it was so much richer than the dull, overly sanitized school books I was accustomed to, that I could get lost in my growing library all day. My uncle’s library must have had an impact on his son as well, for he is now a well-traveled professional photographer with an astounding portfolio of elegantly composed, published images to his credit.
I am very proud of him; I know his early life was probably tough with his military father moving the family about. His dad was all about planning, he even had us synchronize our watches when taking us to Disney world, and had us attack each ride like it was some kind of super critical Special Operations mission. My cousin was partly responsible for my early focus on avian art, because he introduced me to naturalist and artist Roger Tory Peterson.
While National Geographic’s writing declined over the years in quality to the point that I reluctantly decided not to renew back in the 90s, it left a lasting impression on both of us, stoking our curiosity much more so than the trips to Disneyworld led by the war veteran we laughingly nicknamed “The General.”
My parents also filled our home with books- history books in particular, and they didn’t protect us from the contents, the triumphs or the tragedies and cruelties. As a consequence, we read anything and everything we came across, be it a cereal box or the encyclopedia, or the countless books my father brought home from a nearby publishing house on his route, and so there was never dull conversation at the dinner table, and often deep discussion.
My folks took us to historic sites and museums as well, and that eventually led to immersion in a community of history-minded individuals whose passion for studying the past shaped my own artistic exploration of it.
One such person is a storyteller. In tribute to her, I included a storyteller in this detail from a scene in an historical illustration done for Great Council Stare Park in Ohio. Storytellers present bits of the human story the way our ancestors did for thousands of years.
Before written language, before the printing press, each generation was infused with the hard-earned life lessons and histories of those who preceded them by story telling, and when groups met, they would share each other’s lessons orally around a campfire or in a plaza, as seen in my painting. The storyteller multiplied the knowledge base of everyone in earshot, and built connections between people exponentially, as each story was learned and retold to the benefit yet more listeners. The lessons became culture. Storytellers were like a glue uniting people into communities.
I am still learning. Every painting, whether it succeeds or fails, adds experience; and experience clarifies. So, never stop reading and inquiring, and be sure to pick the brains of everyone you meet, even if you disagree with them. You cannot explain the present, nor prepare for the future, without having a broad body of knowledge about the past. The more data points you have, the clearer your picture will be when you paint it.