In my recent email, Cultivating Creativity, I talked about how teachers were the original influencers in our lives. Thinking about that started me on a deep dive on the three art teachers that had the most influence on me and my eventual career in art.
Growing up, my schooling was very focused on academics. I was an accelerated student, starting early and skipping a grade, and my private school education centered on challenging me in subjects like math. Art was always fun but never a major focus. It wasn’t until seventh grade, when I entered public school and chose art as an elective, that I met Mr. James Huff. He was the first teacher who made me feel like I had a genuine talent for art.
We had an assignment where we had to observe and draw our hands. I guess I impressed him because he worked with me for the rest of the class. I remember making a stencil and going outside with spray paint and him just pushing me to be creative with the process. I looked up Mr. Huff and found out he was a very well known artist in North Carolina. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2017.
Next was Ms. (Margaret) Davis in 10th grade at West Forsyth High School. By this point I knew art was a part of me. My parents were supporting this interest around this time with gifts of a drawing table, nice colored pencils, etc. Ms. Davis was, again, super creative. Her projects were challenging and she pushed us to take everything to the next level…our technique, our creativity…everything. She wasn’t one of the ‘favorite’ teachers because she was so tough but I loved her challenges! Some of my favorite student work (ie dragged around for years and years and years) came from her class.
I couldn’t find any trace of Ms. Davis now. I don’t know if she divorced and changed her name or moved. There are quite a few ‘Margaret Davises’ in North Carolina (that weren’t her) alone so it felt like looking for a needle in a haystack if I continued my search.
One of my strengths as an artist has always been my drawing skills. Mark Gottsegen was one of my drawing instructors at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). He was one of the better professors and had a good rapport with the students. I was very proud of my drawing skills and was hoping to impress him. What he said to me has been probably one of the most influential aspects of my artistic style and development over the years. He took a long look at the assignment I completed, a large drawing of a still life (left). I’ll always remember what he said. He told me it was a very nice, realistic drawing of the still life, but if he had wanted that, he would have taken a photograph. He wanted me to make art.
Not that realism and hyper-realism aren’t valid art forms, but to me it freed me. Up to that point my concept of ‘good’ was how much whatever I drew looked like what I was drawing. I felt the bands snap off my brain when he told me that. The point wasn’t to create pencil replicas of the objects…it was to make art!
That’s when my lines got looser and more artistic. I began looking at what I could do, not just copy. To this day I look at my art that way. Can I draw or paint a hyper realistic subject? Yes, and sometimes I incorporate that into my art…but I’m making art, not life replicas.
Mr. Gottsegen is also no longer of this world as he passed away in 2013. He was influential not only with his admirable teaching skills but his contributions to the painting world with his publications of Painter’s Handbook and A manual of Painting Materials and Techniques. Fun Fact: He also asked me from that drawing, “You’ve got astigmatism, don’t you?” Yes, actually I do and he pointed out my drawing was slightly tilted. I rarely wear glasses for the astigmatism and it’s something I have to be careful about in my art to this day.
As I’m doing this deep dive into the art teachers that influenced me over the years, I realize one of the common threads was the commitment to creativity. I had plenty of teachers that taught copying, whether other art or from photographs. The goal being as accurate as possible. There is definitely value in this type of learning as it has been the foundation of traditional art schools and guilds for centuries.
But these teachers gave me the push to go beyond and trust my creative instinct. I always joked with my own art students on the first day that I was giving them their artistic license. I guess Mr. Huff gave me mine and Ms. Davis and Mr. Gottsegen renewed it for me. And for that, I am forever thankful.