The Artist's Way

make that same gift for himself.
Edwin’s is not an isolated case. All too often the artistic
urges of the artist child are ignored or suppressed. Often
with the best intentions, parents try to foster a different,
more sensible self for the child. “Stop daydreaming!” is one
frequently heard admonition. “You’ll never amount to
anything if you keep on with you head in the clouds” is
another.
Baby artists arc urged to think and act like baby doctors
or lawyers. A rare family, faced with the myth of the
starving artist, tells its children to go right ahead and try for
a career in the arts. Instead, if encouraged at all, the children
are urged into thinking of the arts as hobbies, creative fluff
around the edges of real life.
For many families, a career in the arts exists outside of
their social and economic reality: “Art won’t pay the electric
bill.” As a result, if the child is encouraged to consider art in
job terms at all, he or she must consider it sensibly.
Erin, a gifted children’s therapist, was in her mid-thirties
before she began experiencing a haunting dissatisfaction in
her work. Unsure what direction to take, she began adapting
a children’s book for the screen. Midway through the
adaptation, she suddenly had a telling dream about
abandoning her own artist child. Prior to becoming a
therapist, she had been a gifted art student. For two decades,
she had suppressed her creative urges, pouring all of her
creativity into helping others. Now, nearly forty, she found
herself longing to help herself.