The first time was such a great experience! I was a sophmore in high school and had never known such a thing or even thought it could be, but it happened at least twice. One doesn’t see it coming.

Once, it was in the library at the school and involved an encyclopedia. I remember two items from that day’s research. A tiny little photograph of a painting of a girl in a field of red poppies illustrated an artical about the famous painter, Monet. To my very center I could feel that image! My family believed that the ideal in painting was photographic accuracy, but Monet achieved a powerful other accuracy that I’ve never forgotten. Others of his paintings evoke that same glorious sensation in me still, as do works by numerous other artists.

Another time, it was in the parking lot as I walked to the bus at the end of the school day. One of the teachers had a white Triumph TR250 and the sight of it affected me similarly as the Monet illustration but more powerfully. Puzzling, because cars did not interest me in the least. I could feel this sublime, glorious appreciation for the thing. It looked like a normal car, but tiny. What I remember most though was the way it felt to see it in the flesh. It was a powerful surge of wonder and happy recognition (as if) that permeated me, centering in the very heart of my soul, or so it felt.

A few years later when I experienced that all over again at the sight of a dark green GT6 in Montana, I decided I must have one of my own. The entire time I owned that car, I felt that glorious wonder inside my soul. Sure, it was just a machine, but something very real and very powerful attended it. It was harmless, but joyful and I treasure the memory.

Because I could not relate to the music that my parents favored, and did not know there was any alternative, I determined at an early age that I disliked music. They listened to old style country where women in a strange accent lament their divorce accompanied by steel guitar, where men taunt persons unknown to hang them from the highest tree, and both sang about being short changed in life. None of it appealed. We were sent away to church some sundays and the songs they sang also failed to inspire, ironically. At school we used to sing “this old man”, which annoyed me. So, thumbs down on music.

It was not to last, however. I began to pick berries in the summer so I could pay for my clothing. Pretty girls with transistor radios played songs unlike I’d ever heard. Even though they were similar themes, they were fun to hear. “Red Rubber Ball”, “98.6”, and others echoed across the field, to my delight. They made berry picking a little more fun.

Then I had my own radio, earned in the fields, and really had positive experiences with songs. By and by, I forgot that I despised music because it no longer had that uncomfortable feeling like drying with a damp towel after a cold shower in a cold room.

Getting back to the art, I tried very had to draw technically accurate sketches. These were, in my world, good art.

Then, I was unemployed. I had three children and an unhappy wife. It was a recession. I was looking for work, but pulled the car into a lot to eat lunch. As usual, I wipped out my pencils and sketched a scene that lay before me. It seemed a pity to me that the trees were growing where they were, because they’d make a better picture arranged differently.

Then it struck me that I had no obligation to depict what my eyes saw except only as a vehicle to transport the viewer of the art to what my heart saw. I realized I could do what made the picture work. From that moment, the art took on a different flavor.

When I showed some of the sketches to my grandfather he handed them back and said, “Dennis (thoughtful pause), you used to be a pretty good artist.”

This dusk sketch was one of the type that caused my grandfather to express that, “you used to be a pretty good artist!”

Years later and not long before his death, he sat for me. I sketched him with a bic pen. It was the first time of many where I told my subject, “If you think it’s a good likeness, then you sign it. Or else I’ll try again.” He signed.

Grandpa. Bic pen sketch done live.

Eventually I realized that what made the art I enjoy so fun is that it is memorable. No matter how the artist got to that point, that was what made it good. The realism that I really loved was a believable narrative art. So J.C. Leyendecker, N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, and Dean Cornwell were great examples of really powerful art that was at once fanciful but also realistic. What slowed me down for a very long time was that my skill and understanding lagged far behind my vision, but I could only imagine expressing that vision through the lense of photographic realism.

Well, it doesn’t work. It can, but it usually doesn’t. Emotional realism carries the ball so much farther, otherwise “the scream” and “starry night” would have gone nowhere.

Rodin nailed this concept in his sculpture.

So now I’m at a juncture with my art where I realize that beautiful as it is, it is not memorable. I’ve known this and puzzled over it for the past few years. Other artists have hit their stride with a memorable style, then fallen from popularity when they departed from it. Popularity is not the end all do all, but it is an indicator of something. A good example was the very successful illustrator Alphonse Mucha, whose girl posters were often very good. When he poured his time and effort in to what he considered much more important work with his political historical paintings, he danced with obscurity because those works reached fewer people. They were for the most part not as memorable. I think that “memorable” means relatable. People don’t like being preached to, and the work he poured his heart and soul into may have undone itself by being too loud and drowning out other views by their enormous size. His girl art, on the other hand, was fun.

Memorable is a quality that I want. The type of memorable that makes you feel good all the way to your core, to your heart. If not yours, then mine.

I know what it feels like to experience something that causes deep impact. So lately I’ve made it my study to achieve the best possible quality in art that also creates something loveable and moving or in a word, “memorable”. As of yet, I have not hit that stride but that is where my energies are being applied. That sort of art is to photography what singing is to talking.  I don’t want to just talk, and all art speaks. I want mine to sing.