Late-Blooming

There is a timing for things. It isn’t a mistake or a sign of weakness when a person comes to art later in life. The time hasn’t been right for them to arrive any earlier. Like late-blooming plants, they’ve weathered the heat, the winds and the fierce summer storms and now, the autumn is their time.

In nature most plants and trees bloom in the spring and summer. But some are only ready to flower in the late fall or winter. In Southern Ontario, some fall and winter-blooming plants include Chrysanthemums, Burning Bush, Amaryllis, Christmas Cactus and species of Witch Hazel. The magnificent Saguaro Cactus, which grows in the Sonoran Desert between Arizona and Mexico, can live for 150-200 years but only blooms after 35 years. And the Madagascar Palm Tree blooms with hundreds of tiny flowers only once in 100 years.

Like the Saguaro Cactus, I bloomed late too, attending art school in my late 40s. It was the right time for me to go through that experience, as I needed maturity and confidence to handle the times where I was flattened by a critique of my work or the lack of interest in it from the teachers. I wouldn’t have been strong enough to handle that in my twenties.

I asked a number of artists for their thoughts about the gifts they brought, coming to art later in life. One woman said, “I [now] have some dependable tools to help me work through the challenges, and a broad range of skills and knowledge that I didn’t have when I was in my twenties,” she says. “I’ve benefited from the circuitous route that I’ve taken to get here. I have formal training in a smorgasbord of disciplines and these all serve to strengthen my ability to think and create. OK, maybe it does rattle me some days,” she says, that “I didn’t show up early. But honestly it just didn't occur to me that I could ever have these skills.”

Another said, "“Maybe I did whittle away a few years in my youth, but all those [life] experiences have made me who I am today and today I am making art. That is what really counts.”

We bring a richness to our art when we arrive later in life after we have done the work and taken the journey; a depth that wasn’t accessible to us when we were young. No one asks why some flowers bloom in the autumn. We’re just grateful that they do.

An excerpt from my upcoming book: Called to Create: On Becoming an Artist Later in Life

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