Today, I met a kindly and talkative elderly gentleman who stopped to look over at my sketchbook while I was drawing cacti in the Baltimore Conservatory.  I guess I expected the usual:  a smile, a murmur of admiration, and then he’d be on his way.  Instead, the man proceeded to quiz me on classical illustrators (which aside from Howard Pyle and Arthur Rackham, and of course Rockwell, I failed miserably) and then began to espouse his theories on the power of visual narrative and the role of the illustrator in shaping public consciousness.  This was my first time encountering a random someone outside of the art world who actually seemed to “get” illustration.  Not to mention someone who made me feel a little out of my depth.  After flipping through my sketchbook, he handed it back to me and asked, “So do you think you’re any good at this?”  

Again, not the response that I’m used to getting when strangers look at my work.  I just laughed awkwardly.

“You know what you are,” he said with a smile.  

“I’m pretty good at this,” I said.  ”But I want to get better.”

We chatted for a bit longer, and the man revealed himself to be the Great-Grandson of the man who founded my college, and the Great-Great Grandson of the man who built the first Catholic Cathedral in the US.  

For some reason his “you know what you are” seemed more profound to me than any other artistic feedback I’ve ever received.  He knew he didn’t need to praise me, and he knew that I didn’t need his criticism.  

I have a chronic condition where I involuntarily search for myth in every aspect of my life. This is usually exhausting, sometimes pointless, but never boring.  This time, I couldn’t help but feel like running into this man was like encountering some kind of archetypal sage, like Rafiki, who with a bundle of annoying questions and a smile gave me a whack on the head with his coconut staff.  

14 Notes/ Hide

  1. sailoralekx said: every moment has meaning.
  2. bluearcane posted this