Twice in my life, I’ve had the rare privilege of encountering a young woman of promise. Only twice because promise is handed out randomly or according to a pattern I can’t discern.
The first time was in high school. Ann Cooper Dobbins stood out in that small group of bright girls, most of us studiously conforming, because she was original—a much more rare quality than I realized then. She was tiny, but her small body contained a mysterious fire, sometimes expressed in high jinks of an innocent kind, such as climbing out the art room window to perch on the school roof, three stories above the ground. Art class had nothing to offer her. It was not until we were both out of college and living in New York City that I became aware of her startling paintings, portraits that paid no mind to what the sitter might have thought “attractive” but rather to a boldness that might have been almost entirely concealed. Because she was adventurous, she was nearly killed in a car accident—those were the days when the boys always drove—and never physically entirely recovered. Her life was not as long as it might have been, and because she loathed marketing her art, most of her paintings were given to friends, like me. Among other odd and endearing things, she painted the elevator hall in the New York building where I was living with green and blue stripes…
Later I had another friend who sacrificed her health and eventually her life to her painting, but I never felt she had a gift. The New York art world had a hand in killing her.
And now, most hopeful of all, one of my granddaughters is embarking on her life as a painter with an extraordinary display of talent—images like no others I’ve ever seen. I know the toil that faces her, the loneliness, the sacrifice of many of the pleasures that most young women hold dear. Thank God she has in this day and age the support of a world that has finally come to understand that a woman of talent needs and deserves special nurturing; my generation had very little of that.
Dating/marriage/children were what mattered, and all of that is a severe impediment to the exercise of a growing talent.
I hope some of you reading this immediately recognize the gleam of talent in yourself or in women you know. If so remember it is a sacred gift, and also a dangerous one, shooting tongues of fire and creating a life suitable to that talent that may not be suitable to anything else.
Watching talent bloom reminds me of those strange magical Japanese crystals we used to drop in a glass of water, then hover anxiously to watch petals and leaves slowly unfurl. There is so little we can do other than to watch in awe and admiration and support the attempt, hard as it is, to make a life suitable to art.
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