Becoming an Artist

            People ask me where ideas for columns come from and how I became a writer. I always say, the former is a mystery, and the latter was sheer luck. It’s true. I recall I wrote a letter to the editor, then another and another and one day one appeared on the Op-ed page with my name above the story, not below it. A week later a check arrived. That certainly was an incentive to write so I continued to do so. The checks continued to arrive, and the rest is history.

            First and foremost, though, I am an artist. I do now how that happened. I first became interested in art watching my father sitting in his easy chair doodling and sketching. He called his drawings “etchings.” I still have them. Years later, after he passed away, we found his Center School junior high yearbook, and his ambition was to be a commercial artist. I guess his dream was fulfilled through me.

            We lived in the city for a time when I was little. Every summer a sign painter would come to paint a new Sunbeam Bread advertising mural on the entire side wall of the variety store around the corner from our house. I was fascinated by how he brought “Little Miss Sunshine” to life, beaming away as she ate a slice of buttered bread. The sign painter would take a week to complete the sign, and I would be right there every day sitting on the hydrant watching him. Not very comfortable in hindsight, but one must suffer for their art.

            It wasn’t long before television came into my world. It would change everything.

            The TV was a huge piece of furniture, a wood cabinet with a tiny, 12-inch, black-and-white screen with a whole bunch of glass tubes in the back. My favorite show was a cartoon that came on every Saturday morning. “Winky Dink and You” aired at 10:30 am, which would delay any outside play.

            In a clever marketing ploy, you could send away, at a small cost of course, for a kit that included some crayons and a clear plastic sheet that would stick to the TV screen. Winky Dink would go on some sort of an adventure, and if he had to cross a river, for example, you would draw a bridge with the crayon on the sheet so he could cross. That was right in my wheelhouse!

            The television brought me in touch with another fellow named Jon Nagy.

            Nagy was an artist who became known as America’s first television drawing instructor. I watched his show religiously. He would draw a scene … maybe a tree and a fence or an old barn … and I would try to copy it, following his instructions. He wrote a book “Learn to Draw” with a kit, which I begged my mom to buy, which she did, that contained everything a budding artist needed. It had a sketch book, pencils of different hardnesses, a gum eraser, some charcoal sticks and a small piece of sandpaper to sharpen your pencils. My life as an artist had begun!

            School beckoned and I looked forward to going every day. Mrs. Hathaway was my teacher. I don’t remember much about her, but I do remember that we got to draw a lot. At Thanksgiving, she would read us stories of the Pilgrims and show us pictures, then we would create a mural on brown paper that she would hang over one wall of the classroom.

            We would draw or paint Pilgrims, the men with buckles on their tall black hats and shoes and the women with their bonnets and white aprons, along with Indians, turkeys and the Mayflower on manila drawing paper, then cut them out and glue them to the paper with white paste. Of course, someone would always eat the paste (me) and be scolded by Mrs. Hathaway (me.)

            School was a long walk from our house. About halfway home there was a house with a sign hanging on a post by the sidewalk that read “Commercial Artist.” Every day I would sit on the curb across the street, waiting for the artist to come out, because I wanted to see what a real, live artist looked like. He never did.

            In high school I took as many art courses as possible. When it was time for college, I knew exactly what I wanted to be. I prepared a portfolio that showed my versatility in a variety of mediums. I was such a hick that when I first saw the school’s catalogue, I assumed the photo on the cover was of a stately building that looked like a castle. I thought it was nestled on a nice campus on a quiet, tree-lined street.

            I took a bus to Boston and a cab to the school. To my surprise the “castle” was on the corner of a busy city street, no campus, no trees. Across the street was the future home of Boston Children’s Hospital. On the other side of the building was the massive Beth Israel Hospital. Not exactly suburbia.

            In those days, an applicant had to take a drawing test. I passed and here I am.

            Being a writer and an artist are not much different. They are both creative activities, but writing is something I do, being an artist is something I am. So, I’ll be taking some time off to enjoy the holidays and do a painting or two.

            As they say in the movies … I’llllll be back!

            Happy Holidays.

            Editor’s note: Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and retired newspaper columnist whose musings are, after some years, back in The Wanderer under the subtitle “Thoughts on ….” Morgado’s opinions have also appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.

Thoughts on…

By Dick Morgado