Reply #22: I'm as opposed to tendentious material [View All]

[hyphenate]

as you can get, but I have to say, this child is outstanding.

One of my dearest and oldest friends is a science fiction artist, who has won many awards in his career, and many times through the years, I saw a lot of his early work at home. Early in his life, around the ages of 9 and 10, he was painting as well, but his true stride came in his teens, when he began to win awards for his SF work. After the first couple of awards, he began to design book covers, and has done so much over the past twenty-five + years that it's incredible.

He was NOT encouraged by his father, though, and I think that for a long time, that held him back. His mom, on the other hand, did encourage him, and it helped a lot, though with approval from his father, he might have gone into another direction.

Artists hold an unspoken insight in their minds which show that somewhere inside of themselves, there are worlds that most of us will never see. Many of us have grown way too cynical, way too limited in our mental scope to allow the free flowing of concepts, ideas and dimensions to our artistic personas. It is when a child has the ability to show us a fresh approach, that we can see things for the first time through eyes that see more than we will ever know.

As a graphic artist and photographer myself, I find sometimes that the simplest and smallest element of a picture often grabs more attention than what I originally began to focus on. Images that are taken or made with a simplistic approach, but with a fine eye toward execution are surprisingly the images we will always remember for the rest of our lives.