Good company: Mark Rothko, Robert Henri, Georgia O'Keeffe...and me

Art Students League of New York. (Wiki Commons)

Mark Rothko, Georgia O'Keeffe, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Henri, George Bellows, Norman Rockwell....

I never met any of those illustrious artists, but my initial art education happened at the place where they, and a pantheon of others learned or taught, the Art Students League of New York.

I've probably mentioned that before; it is probably the single educational experience in my life--and I never chose a school or instructor that didn't have an excellent reputation--that I value above all others.

I valued it when I was running an ad agency in South Florida, an experience I often refer to as Swimming with the Sharks. And yes, by the way, I got nibbled on and decided maybe that wasn't for me.

I valued it when, in angst over the troubles at the agency after I shut it down, I began seriously studying horsemanship at a premier show barn in Maryland.

I valued it when I wrote all manner of odd and interesting things at the executive editor's behest for a daily newspaper in Bristol, TN/VA (it's on the state line.)

I valued it very highly when I went back to freelance writing, the job I had done for 20 years before the awful Swimming with the Sharks experience.

I valued it more highly still the couple of times finances forced me to take jobs editing crappy publications in Baltimore. One of those publications was about insurance, for god's sake. I called the publisher Chunky Skippy behind his back, because he was fat and reminded me of a previous gormless publisher I had called Skippy, many years before. He also demanded that I watch the Jerry Springer TV show with him any day I hadn't managed an out-of-office meeting at 3 in the afternoon. That job was, all in all, low art in every way.

But it was still not as bad as the job I took at a dental consulting firm where the man who graduated 2nd from the bottom of his dental class taught other dentists how to make tons of money by milking their patients dry. (My UK readers: Don't be alarmed; this is something that could only happen in America.) I spent only three scant months turning his natterings into columns for the American Dental Association magazine and other dross. I'm proud to say they fired me. Not for my work. They fired me because I had dared to suggest that it was unseemly for the IT guy to make racial remarks about my assistant in my presence and I wanted it to stop. Apparently, that was a little too post-Civil War for them, so they fired me. As well, they attempted to deny my state unemployment payments but failed miserably when I told the African-American examiner what it was all about. Now THAT was high art.

I've had lots of opportunities to value my education at the Art Students League, but until now, I only sporadically used that education. I'd paint a commissioned portrait now and then, a rendering of someone's new garden landscaping in watercolour, some trompe  l'oeil for an interior designer and so on.

But now I'm putting brush to canvas just about every day, wondering what will happen all these years later. Will the foundation laid in classes with Robert Beverly Hale, Tom Fogarty and Gregory D'Alessio be evident any time soon?

Every so often, I visit the League's website, just to get a refresher dose of the noise of West 57th Street, the dusty-painty-solventy smell of the League's halls and rooms, the image of the homeless woman who used to almost crawl up the stairs to the ladies' toilets a couple of times a day; no one cared....although she did smell a bit. I think most of us gave her lunch money from time to time. In retrospect, I can't help thinking of Phil Collins' song Another Day in Paradise, although I was at the League several years before he released that song.

I need to remember that the man who most often placed his easel next to mine in Hale's class was a former pimp who had made tons of money, moved to rural upstate New York, and spent four days in NYC at the League because it was what he always wanted to do before he was a pimp.

I need to remember a couple of evenings in the Member's Life Session standing next to the late Peter Falk (Lt. Columbo), who was also a member and came to draw when he was in town. He usually took his shirt off, as it was hot in the life-class rooms. I don't recall what we might have spoken about; probably just the sort of Hi, how are you, how long is the next pose, do I have time to nip out for coffee sort of thing. Yes, sure, it was exciting. It was. But so natural for NY.

Anyway....today in my visit to the League's site, I found a notice that someone had done a short film about the League. I clicked it. I watched it. For almost ten minutes, I could be back at the League, hearing the New York accents, a smattering of non-English accents, the rumble of traffic...all of it, the heady mix that every League student wore deep in their  being, the accompaniment to the painty smock or ink-stained fingernails they wore on the outside.

I miss it. But I wouldn't trade Cornwall for it, not now.

I'm just thankful I have the memories to access, and every now and then a little help with that, plus the pleasure of living in Cornwall with my husband, my dog, my cat and my intention to finally pull all the disparate parts together into something I hope might be called art.