Eleanor Roosevelt

"Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art."

— Eleanor Roosevelt

American Speaker, Author, Political Activist

1884 - 1962

In one sense, we all are artists.  We create the lives we lead.  While we may not have any control over what happens to us, we do have control how we respond to what happens to us.  And how we respond creates the person we become.  When you reach the end of the road one day and you look back at your life, what is the legacy you have left behind.  What kind of person have you become?  Will you be a grouchy, grumpy old drunk or a kind, caring matriarch?  Will you dance with laughter or worry and fret over the fact that your husband never puts down the toilet seat?  We all make choices in life and those choices create the lives we lead.  

Our lives are a work of art.  What color are your memories?  How many wrinkles line your dreams?  Do your hopes have arthritis?  What are you doing today that will create your legacy tomorrow?  What decisions are you making today that will form the core of your character tomorrow?  Life is about growth and change.  What lessons are you learning that will change your life?  Your life is a canvas.  Pick up your paint brush and start painting.  Live the life today that you will be proud of when you are 103.

Ralph Steadman

"What I used to do with a passion, foolishly and vainly imagining I would change the world for the better, I no longer tolerate in myself or anyone else.  But draw, always draw — and WRITE."

— Ralph Steadman

British Artist, Writer

1936 -

Have you ever dreamed of changing the world — making it a better place?  Unfortunately, most people have very little influence on the world at large.  And with the one person that we do have influence over — ourselves — we usually lack the discipline for long-term change.  Have you ever tried to change a spouse or a significant other?  It rarely works.  I have often heard of wrecked marriages resulting from one person trying to change the other.

The Sheriff
1995

Revolution is often said to be the passion of youth.  And if one does not die in the revolution, one grows wiser with age.  If you study history, you will realize that even when the evil empire is overthrown, it is usually replaced by another empire that eventually becomes evil itself.  And the cycle continues.  The young want power and the old are unwilling to relinquish it.

And what you might add does all this have to do with art and writing?  Every generation or two there are revolutions in artistic taste and style.  The younger generation of artists challenges the older generation.  Today abstract expressionism is giving way to a resurgence of realism.  And tomorrow?  I won't even begin to predict.

I think Ralph Steadman has hit the nail on the head.  Stop worrying about changing the world, your spouse or even yourself.  Just create:  draw, paint and write. 

George Washington Carver

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong.  Because someday in life you will have been all of these."

— George Washington Carver

American Scientist

1864 - 1943

One of challenges we all face is accepting people who are different than ourselves.  And I am not talking here about race or culture or religon or nationality.  I'm talking about the little things that separate people.  Is there someone in your life who talks  too much or too little?  Are there people who you perceive to be stuck-up?  Do you dislikefat people or sloppy people?  Is there someone in your life who is too organized or too thin?  Do you think all poets are crazy and should get a real job?  Do you not like the way someone combs his hair or the clothes he wears?

As George Washington Carver points out, we are all human.  We have all been young and if we live long enough we will all grow old.  What people who complain about growing old don't realize is that the alternative is dying young.  Now the interesting idea in this quote is that we need to be tolerant of both the strong and the weak.  And it is easy to see being tolerant of the weak, but why the strong?  I think the reason we need to be tolerant of the strong is because they also make mistakes.  We have a tendency to put people on a pedestal and then knock them off.  We don't like it when our heroes are too perfect.  We prefer them to have clay feet so we can knock them down.

As writers, artists and actors, we sometimes put other actors, writers and artists on a pedestal and become disappointed when they don't live up to our expectations.  We need to become more accepting and tolerant of our peers, mentors and teachers.  We are all human and we all make mistakes.  The message is simple: judge not others.

Gail Godwin

"Within the last year I have discovered I can compose whole paragraphs in my head and find them waiting, intact, next morning."

— Gail Godwin

American Novelist

1937 - 

Our minds are very powerful and capable of doing more than we imagine.  In a recent New York Times Book Review essay on the lives of aging writers, Godwin, 73, tells us that she is now able to compose paragraphs in her mind and retain them — something she was unable to do in her youth.  She remembers as a young writer hearing Jorge Luis Borges tell his audience at the Iowa Writer's Workshop that blindness taught him to compose his stories in his head.  I know of poets who compose poems in their minds and are able to recite them from memory.

Many young writers and artists feel that if they are not successful by the time they turn forty, they have failed.  Yet, writing and painting is a learning process.  Creativity does not rest with only the young.  Some of us don't get our first wind until we are over sixty.  I remember reading the story many years ago of a writer who published his first novel in his thirties and his second in his eighties.

While Gail Godwin is best known for her thirteen novels, she has also composed music with Robert Starer and keeps colored pencils at her bedside.  On her website Godwin says that she will often draw before she goes to sleep.  She says: "I also draw when I am baffled by some aspect of the character.  Making a visual image of that character in action almost always reveals something new."