I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a daddy. Katie and I have two beautiful children, but balancing a career and family is not easy; it’s agony to leave the studio when a painting sucks and reset into domestic life, homework, dinnertime, baths, and the many phases of bedtime. After my kids are tucked in, I take a scalding hot shower to Frank Sinatra and dry off under the hair dryer on the hottest setting. Then, I drink a glass of ice water and collapse into bed. As I drift to sleep, my mind ponders other types of work, critical jobs such as police officer, doctor, soldier, firefighter, and teacher. I try to imagine losing a bleeding patient in the operating room or shouldering eighty pounds of equipment up a flight of stairs in thousand- degree heat, and I remember that an artist has the best job on earth.
Every morning, I ride the subway with my fellow New Yorkers going to their respective jobs. They wear gray business suits or silk dresses; others don uniforms decorated with logos such as UPS or FedEx. I dress like a middle-aged fat guy going to a kegger. Most people carry a briefcase or backpack. This morning I had a rubber hose and a DVD boxed set of Green Acres. My job is weird, but the thought of not doing it is weirder. I know how fortunate I am. When a doctor has a bad day, someone dies; a lousy day for a painter is the wrong tone of pink. But our job is critical in other ways. There is no culture unless we show up for work. Artists aren’t team players; we’re narcissistic, easily offended, often medicated, and blue. (I realize I’ve just described Cookie Monster.) We’re dreamers, and there is no civilization without dreamers. We don’t do it for the attention and certainly not for the money. We do it for the pure love of the thing. Kenneth Clark wrote, “Facts become art through love.” A painter must fall madly in love with absolutely everything. The instant that work becomes labor, you’re dead.
Having children made me a better artist because I feel a love that I didn’t think possible, as if a new organ sprouted in my chest. Fatherhood also meant that I’d worry every minute for the rest of my life. The first couple of years are just suicide watch, keeping fingers out of outlets and little feet away from stairs, but when a child’s personality emerges, it is wondrous and funny beyond words.
When my daughter asked if I was the tooth fairy, I said, “Yes, honey, I am the fairy.”
She thought for a moment. “You fly all over the world and collect the children’s teeth?”
My heart filled with joy because we saw the same thing from two different vantage points. To an adult, a child’s toy is trivial. However, the world that child creates around it is rich and spacious. I don’t know about you, but my childhood was spent in blissful boredom, fishing in lakes and wandering along creek beds with nothing to do; a single day seemed to last forever. There were no plans, only happenings. Ask any kid to describe their day, and they’ll say, “This happened. Then this happened. Then that happened.” Painting restores the spaciousness of childhood and reminds us of things we knew but forgot, because art is carefully orchestrated wandering. If you’re in a hurry, you’ll miss everything. To be a painter, you must have more patience than anyone else in the room and know how to disappear in plain view. Becoming a father taught me both. Plus, how seriously can you take yourself while wiping someone’s boogers on a tree?