Are You Still Learning what You’ve Learned?

Watching my friend Cliff come in through the doors of our studio every day to work was even painful for me. The man moved slowly… deliberately.

“That could be great if you used a two-inch brush.” – Clifford Wilton

After dawning his paint-encrusted shop jacket he would sit down at his table, and begin drawing black and white thumbnails on scrap paper with a sharpie or flip one of his paintings upside down to experiment with a new composition. Leukemia, a double case of shingles, and a bit of skin cancer followed him daily to the job, but he was undeterred. With the exception of a couple of doctors appointments, he rarely deviated from this ritual and regularly beat me to the studio to start the day.

From time to time I would hold up a meticulous painting and ask what he thought.
“That could be great if you used a two-inch brush.”
It was almost always some iteration of the same reply. Why bother asking when he obviously didn’t understand what I was trying to achieve with my painting?

Different variations on a compositional theme – Clifford Wilton

The best lessons aren’t always learned while they’re being taught. You may have heard the saying “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” It’s true enough, but I’m not sure that the student always knows that they’re ready, or that their teacher has arrived. I shared a studio with Cliff for over 10 years, and it wasn’t until after his death, that I began to realize the full impact that his presence and example had on my work.

Many of my breakthroughs have come years after a friend, mentor, or teacher planted the seeds of the idea. My brain buries these nuggets deep in the mine of my subconscious. Once the trap is set, my mind will nibble on the cheese for a long time before the new idea snaps into place. It may appear from the outside like the ideas presented have never landed.  But for me, some learning takes a long time to digest.

How many times have you discovered the lesson in hindsight?

Have you had a mentor who plants the seeds of ideas, but leaves you room to discover them for yourself?

Are you still learning what you’ve learned?