Category: Dr. Seuss

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The Secret Life of Dr. Seuss

Hotel del Coronado records the view outside Geisel’s studio window.
I can’t imagine there’s an American alive who isn’t familiar with the works of Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel). Several generations of children have learned to read with his books and his drawings are ubiquitous.
Gosh! Do I Look as Old as All That! is part of an 11-painting series gently mocking La Jolla matrons.
The world as seen by Dr. Seuss is strange, but it might look a bit less odd to a native of San Diego. Geisel modeled his palms and acacias, brightly-plumed birds and bright landscapes on the Southern California scene.
Martini Bird, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
Geisel lived in La Jolla, an upscale seaside neighborhood in San Diego, from 1953 until his death in 1991. There he wrote most of his classic children’s tales including The Cat in the Hat, Horton Hears a Who, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Green Eggs and Ham, and The Lorax.
Raising Money for the Arts, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
Like so many 20th-century book illustrators, he learned his craft through advertising, drawing for General Electric, NBC, Standard Oil, and other companies.
Cat Behind the Hat, Theodor Geisel (Dr Seuss)
Dr. Seuss liked to paint at night after he was done writing and illustrating during the day. Unlike most artists with a bifurcated work life, his personal paintings aren’t clearly different from his story books. This couldn’t have been because his life was smooth sailing: his first wife, Helen Palmer Geisel, committed suicide in despair over illness and her husband’s burgeoning affair with her close friend. Geisel served in the First Motion Picture Unit of the Army in the Second World War and lived through all of the epochal, cataclysmic events of the 20th century. But none of that shows in his work. It is unfailingly gentle and shallow, although marginally more adult.
Lion Stroll, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
Ingenious! The World of Doctor Seuss is an exhibit of reproductions of his paintings and sculpture. (His widow refuses to allow any of his original work to be displayed.) It runs at the San Diego History Center until the end of 2015.
Oh, I’d Love to go to the Party, but I’m Absolutely Dead, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
                                                                                                                                              

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Did you miss your calling?

Dr. Seuss was a successful commercial artist when, at age 34, he wrote his first book, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.” It was rejected by publishers dozens of times. He was in his late 40s when he began successfully writing and selling children’s books. He did this advertisement in the 1930s.
This past week I had conversations with two artists about the feasibility of being a full-time artist.
One is a woman with a young family, a mortgage, an MFA and a good (albeit temporary) job. Judging by the work I’ve seen, she has prodigious talent. If given the opportunity for a permanent position, should she take it? Or should she chuck that idea and try to work as a waitress nights and weekends so that she can still make art.
As a working mother, she is already doing two jobs. Adding a third job will be difficult, if not impossible. Until her kids are old enough for school, she’d be smart to do whatever pays best, and save money against the day she drops the day job and takes up painting again. In the meantime, she can carve out a small corner of her house and a few hours a week to nurture her talent, even if it’s by sketching in her spare time.
Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses, was the poster girl for late-life career changes, having turned to painting in her seventies. Here, Country Fair, 1950.
In essence, that’s what I did. I worked in the marketplace until I was in my late 30s, when a combination of life events made it possible—mandatory, even—for me to resume painting. (There was a time when our society acknowledged that raising children was valuable work. Now, childrearing is supposed to run silently in the background, taking no time or effort at all.)
One of my painting students has an MBA and work experience in an area of business analysis I won’t pretend to understand. She picked up brushes in response to a life crisis and in the process discovered that she has a real affinity for it.
On Saturday, we discussed what the next step might be for a person who wants to start selling paintings. As so often happens with these things, Life answered her question; she was approached about doing a solo show at a local venue.
Vincent Van Gogh didn’t actually start painting until he was in his late 20s, when he only had a decade left to live. Most of his masterpieces were created in the last two years of his life. Wheat Field with Crows, 1890, is generally accepted to be his last painting.
That’s a tremendous affirmation, but as we old-timers know, a show is just a doorway through which you enter the next phase of your work. She still has a long, hard slog ahead of her, but she has the character to endure it.
Neither of these women will find it an easy road. But in both cases, I think they will find something very valuable comes from it.

Come to Maine and learn to paint before it’s too late. I have two openings left for my 2014 workshop in Belfast, ME. Information is available here.