Artists

An artist is someone who never loses a sense of the power of the symbols he or she creates. So many of us lose that sense around age six or seven when suddenly the circle with two dots and a crinkly line is no longer Mommy and we look with envy and longing at the precocious child beside us in class whose drawing looks more like a photograph. We want to do that too but can’t because we need to practice doing it and there might not be time in school or motivation outside of school or support for pursuing the practice. That kid who can instinctively draw well is like the kid who can sink baskets or serve and volley in tennis or do lovely pirouettes on figure skates or hit a fast pitch or bend it like Beckham in soccer. But does the fact of others’ skills in sports stop people from playing, and through their play becoming ever more skilled themselves? What is it about art that at such a young age the perception of someone else’s superior skill is enough to turn a child off for life?