The Idiot Savant

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who out there is an idiot savant? lest you take offense, "idiot" means simply that one is untrained in the area of one's extraordinary ability. and here we speak of savants in the realm of the arts.

so, are you an idiot savant? you needn't be modest. indeed, you mustn't be. i'm an idiot (hee, hee) in the visual arts. i have no training excepting for a short time when i was shown the techniques of using oil. the gentleman artist who showed me told me that most people can teach themselves (he said nothing of quality) landscape and still life painting but that one must have training to paint portraits. yeh. you know what i did. yep, i went home and painted one. (i'm that way. say i can't and i will. has gotten me in trouble-like at the airport...) the portrait that accompanies this message (to the left, under my name) is the portrait that i painted. it's my first portrait and is a self portrait. yes, it's all done with mirrors.

ok, so i have no training. what experience have i? i have very, very little experience. perhaps it totals a few years, and none of that time is recent. i'm 56 and haven't done anything in a good (bad?) 20 years. before that-very little excepting some silly work for my children. to create my art i have to have the subject present or i can't recreate it on my paper/canvas. i can, but hardly ever do, create, as i said, silly unrealistic art.

this clearly is the opposite of the maxim, "use it or lost it." ok, maybe i haven't gotten better through years of disuse. i've always been able to draw anything i see. when i was 7 i said i was going to be an artist when i grew up. i guess that in my 56th year i became big. (and none of those fat lady jokes!) i've never been able to hold a job. now i finally have one. i don't know how steady it will be. i'm pretty complacent about my gift... but now i'm "letting the word out" that i do artwork for commission and specialize in portraiture.

right now i have 3 commissioned portraits that i must no longer put off doing. one is of a little darling little boy who is dead, one is of two little brothers and the third is of a father and his 4 daughters (the father considers this a study and will commission a larger work when it is completed. cool, huh?)

i am able to use all media excepting watercolor and sculpture, and those because i'm not interested. subject matter is any and every thing. one thing though, before i start i'm afraid, maybe that it won't turn out. (that's never happened.) and when i do a piece of work i never know how it will turn out. i can't "see" it. i don't have a preconceived picture in my mind. it's like it creates itself. for real. but whatever i do, i'm not satisfied with it. everyone else may be going "wow! wow!!" but i think, "see that little spot??" of course, when i see it again after a considerable length of time i think, "you know? that's not bad."

anyway... anna

I'm mostly just really good at anything creative. Music, painting, designing. With viola, it's hard to tell, since i've been taking lessons since I was 5. but i've never studied piano, and I seem to learn that faster than everyone else, and I've never studied painting, but I am pretty good at that, same with sewing, and apparently toothpick-bridgebuilding (don't ask.)

I never really considered that I was good at those things, it's more of trying something and being like, "hey, nifty, I can do that. cool." I realized recently that most people have to work really hard to learn how to do things, and that my non-chalance hurt their feelings. The downside is, when something is hard for me, I just get frustrated really quickly. I am much more loathe to put in the time it takes to learn things than most of my friends. I have a terrible work ethic.

yeh, like today. i did absolutely nothing except read, doze and "work" on the computer. i've not been able to keep a job--or even get one most of the time, so i'm home all the time except for tuesday mornings (psychiatrist) and saturdays (church and then spending the afternoons w/ really close friends [they're like family]). also, i'm recovering from an intense long weekend with my brother-in-law's x-wife and 3 children (one of which is his). it was a good weekend. they all had great fun. the 17 yr old boy wants to live w/ us, the 7 yr old girl just blossomed. and then there was 12 yr old mo, our blood niece. i like children (i have 2 [grown] of my own)--relate to them much better than i do adults--which is probably why i survived. but now i have to recover. (not that this has anything to do w/ a work ethic. i tend to diverge...)

I have no real formal background or trainning in writing although I am sure you can't get that sort of stuff. Really shy about revealing my work but almost everyone who sees it says its real good stuff...well except for trolls. One time a guy compared one of my character's faces to a digested brain. What he diddn't get was that I was trying to make him as physically unattractive as possible.

I am a savant with aspergers snydrom. Yes, sometimes my brain does go through shock.
[ Usally when i need to think.]