This is an old piece from 1994 when I was still just beginning to realize that I might find something in all the time and effort I was putting into painting. It’s not a great piece but there are things I like about, things that gave me a feeling of potential, at least in my own head.
I bring this up because of a brief conversation I had with a friend this past weekend. I attended an opening at the West End Gallery and ran into a friend, also a painter, so naturally our conversation turned to baseball. We were discussing a well known pitcher who had great abilities, great stuff, who, while occasionally displaying his brilliant talents, often performed far below his talent level. His efforts seemed to betray his potential.
In the conversation, I equated the pitcher to a painter we both knew. I had followed his work for a number of years ever since he had graduated from a pretty good college program, having seen a group of his collegiate work at a time not too long after I had painted the piece above. I remember being very impressed at the time. Actually, envious is a better word for what I felt. I saw real potential in that work and realized that I was struggling to achieve things that obviously came easily to him. I remember being a little disheartened at the time at my own talents compared to his.
But his subsequent work has yet to live up to the potential I saw. It has been okay but hasn’t made any leaps above that early work. It’s always puzzled me and made me feel he was somehow betraying his obvious talent and potential. I pointed this out to my friend this past Friday and he had a different take. He thought I was seeing more potential in that collegiate work than may have been there, that while there was talent most of what I was seeing was the result of a lot of supplied direction from his instructors, not the result of his own natural output. He also pointed out that the other painter had other avenues that he was following, that his real potential might not even lay in the same field I was seeing it.
At that point in my head I immediately realized that I was so wrong in my appraisal of this painter’s potential. I was seeing his potential against my own desires, not taking into account his own desires, which might include goals that were a million miles from my own. I was imagining what I could do with the talent I saw in that early. I was assuming that he had the need to express himself solely through his art, the same as I did. His failure to followup on the potential I placed on his work was not his failure, it was mine in not seeing that his potential had merely moved in different directions.
It made me look at my whole attitude on the expectations of other’s potential. What I might see as important might not seem so important in the lives of others and vice versa. I see this artist’s life and potential in a whole different light, one not shaded with my own expectations of what he could or should be.
Phew, that feels good to get off my chest…
Redtree Times 
Maybe the artist that you felt never reached his potential still holds boatloads of talent and may have a strong a desire to be successful. It may just happen sometime down the road.
Part of being a college art major is being able to focus on your craft; the downside is finding that there may not be a market for your craft upon graduation.
Perhaps the decline in the individual’s work reflects the post college reality: the need to find viable employment and keep it.
If an artist doesn’t achieve initial success chances are they may loose a bit of motivation and focus, but it may resurface.
You’re absolutely right. Part of my flawed judgement came from seeing this talent and imagining how I could use it, especially at that first viewing. I didn’t take into account that his goals might be much different than mine.
You’re also right that the boatloads of talent are still there and may resurface if the motivation and focus can ever be found. My only worry is that when someone has a natural talent, they take it for granted, feeling that t can come back at the flip of a switch when I have found ( and I think you will agree) that it is a matter of putting in the time to see that jump to the next level. The talent needs to be exercised, built up.
I’m really hoping this person finds the desire to do this at some point. He has plenty of time to start- I can attest to that.
Also, maybe he needed to put aside his talent for a bit and experience different parts of life so that he has more to express than a young man just out of school.