Magic

An Artist Finds His Talent

By U. S. Andersen | Posted 10/5/23

A number of years ago there lived in a poor section of a large city a man who had given up the years of his youth to perfect his art. He lived meagerly on what few pennies he could earn making charcoal sketches in waterfront bars, and he spent every moment he could spare in front of his easel. He painted ships, every conceivable type and kind, at sea, becalmed and in storm, in port, loading and unloading, ships under sail, ships under steam, sleek yachts, wallowing freighters, men-o'-war.

He loved the sea and he loved to paint, and by the amount of time he had spent at each he should have mastered his art very well, but he hadn't. Somehow it escaped him. His paintings were not amateurish: they exhibited the hand of an artisan; yet they always seemed cliches, as if they were saying something that had been said a thousand times before. People would look at them and even comment that they had seen them before. They hadn't, of course. The paintings just contrived to look like others that had been done.

The painter realized this fact only too well. His work was intensely dissatisfying to him. He often would relate that when he first was struck with an idea for a new subject he would be deeply elated and would set to work with a vengeance. Then, as the work progressed under his hand, he gradually would come to see that it was not a thing of inspiration at all, but wooden, pat, said before, a reproduction, and even before the work was finished he would be gripped by a depression so intense that he scarcely could finish. Still, he drove himself unremittingly. He felt a talent was within him, and he was determined to get it out.

Once, in a rage at himself, he burned all the paintings in his studio, nearly setting fire to the building. Another time he was so furious at his hand for its clumsiness that he badly lacerated his fingers, intent on cutting them off. All this, of course, would indicate that our friend was not psychologically stable, but perhaps it was simply that his provocation was great, so enormous was the creative urge that constantly goaded him.

Like most of the great lessons that life teaches, his enlightenment came dear. When war broke out he had just finished a period of deep dissatisfaction with his painting. Disgustedly, he decided to turn his back on it forever. He shipped out as a merchant seaman aboard a freighter bound for Murmansk. The convoy was attacked by German planes and submarines as it skirted the Norwegian coast. Our painter's ship was sunk, and he wound up in a lifeboat on the frigid and stormy Arctic Ocean.

For days and nights they drifted, fighting the freezing cold, trying to stay alive. At one juncture the skies cleared long enough for them to be sighted by German planes, and they were bombed and strafed. Five men were killed, three others seriously wounded, dying that night. A day later, two more died from exposure. Finally there were left in the boat only the painter and the ship's purser, an elderly and apparently frail man who surprisingly still survived.

"It's no use," said the painter at length. "There is no hope for us, and we might as well slip over the side right now and be done with it."

"That's not for us to decide," said the purser.

"Who then?" asked the painter.

The purser sat calmly, and his eyes were kind. "Do we decide to be born?" he asked. "Do we decide our nationality, our race, our heritage? Someone or something else does, I think. Get yourself quiet and listen. Perhaps you will hear a voice speak within you. Then you will learn whether you are to live or die."

The end seemed near. Surely it was useless to struggle further. For the first time in his life the painter was able to give over direction of his destiny to something other than his own ego. The bitter cold of approaching night descended on them. Just before dusk a British seaplane swooped out of the fog with a roar, saw them, landed on the sea, took them aboard. They were in a London hospital that night.

After some weeks of convalescence, our painter once again tried his hand at his easel. What emerged from the canvas startled him. It was as if a hand other than his own guided the brush, chose the colors, as though a mind other than his own envisaged the scene. Viewing the complete painting he felt a surge of joy. This was the talent he had fought to bring forth, and now it was flowing! In rapid succession he completed six paintings, packed them off to a London art dealer, where they were received with open arms. They were an instantaneous success, launching him on a long and remarkable career.

Years later he was asked about his early period of struggle and how his talent happened to mature.

"It didn't mature," he answered. "It was there all the time. I just never could bring it out because I thought it belonged to me. As soon as I was able to see that it belonged to a being greater than I, it emerged of its own accord and used me, where before I had been trying vainly to use it."

Mystical, yes, a kind of cosmic perception by the artist of his muse, but a far greater secret is hidden here. Our painter stumbled upon the psychological relationship of ego to Secret Self that brooks no failure, that inevitably leads to success, for it is a relationship in which all thought and action proceed out of a universal intelligence and omnipotent power that makes each work absolutely effective.

Next: Creative Work Is a Prayer

Before The Law of Attraction or The Secret, there was The Magic in Your Mind by U. S. Andersen …