Making Art and a Happy Life

The Journey Ken Rasmussen

The Journey – Detail from a painting by Ken Rasmussen

I’m fifteen, and I’m coming home from school on the train. It’s winter, so it’s already dark. I had this feeling come over me. I suddenly knew I wanted to be an artist. It wasn’t just a thought or a possibility. I felt completely certain.

A reassuring sense of warmth swept over me as I sat there looking out the window. Just recently I Googled the word epiphany. I read that experiences aren’t considered a true epiphany unless there is also a warm sensation. That moment was my epiphany.

I started to ponder the consequences of my decision. Immediately I assumed I’d probably be poor. I believed that I wouldn’t be able to have a family or a home of my own. Hardship would be the cost I’d have to pay. I felt a sad acceptance.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t draw. My parents respected and encouraged my childhood passion. My father kept me supplied with pencils and paper. Beyond my closest relationships, art is all I’ve ever cared about.

This decision to choose art as a career was a challenge for my parents. My Mother suggested I put paintings in a corner store window. She proposed the misguided and dangerous proposition that I might find a big man to care for me. She felt that having a benefactor was the only viable plan. She was loving and fearful for my survival. My Dad encouraged me to consider a second career that might fund my art.

That’s how I ended up enroled to study law at university. I lasted a year. During that time I discovered that there were as many unemployed lawyers as there were unemployed artists. It seemed a very indirect route to take. If I was going to be an artist I wanted to get on with it and give it my full commitment.

I transferred to art school. My Dad took my paintings to Joan Longley at Ric’s Gallery in Dalkeith. He arranged for my first exhibition.

I read about artists who combined interesting artistic lives with a disciplined approach to earning a living. I decided that would be me. I don’t believe that artists are impotent, hopeless and helpless creatures adrift in uncertain lives. Not unless they choose to be. I was clear about my choice. I wanted to make art, and I wanted to thrive.

So the fifteen-year-old on the train was both right and wrong. Right in the knowledge that I was an artist. Wrong in the assumption that it would cost me a good life and connection. Living as an artist does not have to exclude you from having a happy life. Indeed for me, the making of art is the way to a happy life.

View: Ken Rasmussen Oil Paintings

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