Archibald Campbell
(based on my watercolor sketch of woodcarver Leroy Setziol).
I think back on the dreams I’ve had in my life. Some became reality, some didn’t. As a young man, I dreamt of becoming a great artist, a revered artist. Someone whose work was widely recognized and respected. That didn’t happen. Why not?
I know now that every dream, every path, involves a sacrifice. Or a series of sacrifices. Ultimately, the degree of success or failure we achieve in any endeavor depends on what sacrifices we’re willing to make. We may set out in pursuit of a dream knowing the sacrifice that will need to be made, and think we’re willing to make it, but when it comes right down to it, we keep putting it off. In my case, that sacrifice was making phone calls. Pounding the mean streets of New York City. Persisting through rejection after rejection. I knew that was what was required. I thought I was willing to stick with my dream through that. I wasn’t.
The art world, at least at the highest levels, the galleries and dealers that cater to the ultrarich, is a world of status-seeking buyers who know next to nothing about art. They are in constant search for status. And dealers are experts in capitalizing on that need for status. The successful ones at least. The life of the artist who seeks to compete in that market is one of building connections, of giving dealers what they want, and of playing one dealer off against another. It is a game of people skills as much as artistic skills. Or maybe it’s more about people skills. Maybe most games, at their highest levels, are about people skills. Alone, the individual human doesn’t amount to much. With all of our flaws and shortcomings, each of us needs to collaborate with others who complement our skills and make our weaknesses less relevant.
In the end, I valued my life of quiet in the woods too much to play the art game. Maybe the first question before pursuing a dream is: Do I really want this out of life? If I had dug down deep as a young man, and asked myself why I wanted to be a successful artist, the answer would have been to live a quiet, independent life in the woods. So then the crucial question is: Do I really need to be a successful artist to do that? The answer would have been obviously no. A quiet life in the woods doesn’t require much money. What naturally flows from that is an unwillingness to make the sacrifices to achieve what I think, on a surface level, I want to achieve, but down deep don’t. In the pursuit of the dream of artistic success, I actually think my inner world sabotaged my dream, worked against it. It wasn’t what it wanted. It wanted peace, and beauty, and quiet.
And thus I embarked on a decades long circuitous path, and arrived where I am. Here in the woods, doing art, and selling it to a small circle of buyers who allow me to live simply.
. . .
Author’s note: I find that in creating these semi-fictional journal entries it helps to have an image of Archibald in my mind. Thinking that over, the painting I did of woodcarver Leroy Setziol came to mind. Leroy hung up on me when I first tried to call him for an interview. He was kind of a curmudgeon. But he was also a deep thinker, a man with grit, a highly creative man, an outsider, and thus is an appropriate model for Archibald.
See my interview of Leroy here.
See a YouTube video of Leroy working here.
. . .
Recent Heron Dance books, go here. They make great Christmas presents for kindred spirits.
Everything Heron Dance does and offers summarized here.
The art and words in this post, go here. The painting is larger there. My paintings are conceived for larger screens.
I find sometimes the dreams we have as young people are very influenced by others around us and so aren't really our dreams. We become the people we are because of our choices and the circumstances around us. We each have our path and we find it one choice at a time. I hope you are fulfilled in your path!