Enjoyed this very much, particularly as it introduced me to many artists I did not know. Gutsy and informative. ( )

The author is less than likeable; she is incredibly arrogant, so sure that her art is better than everyone else thinks, upset that she doesn't receive recognition from "The Art World" in the same way she did in the world of academia and history.

She is convinced that everything boils down to race, sex, and age. If someone doesn't like her or her art, it's clear to her that they are racist, sexist, and/or ageist. It never crosses her mind that maybe her art just isn't their style, or that their personality doesn't mesh with hers. She always assumes the worst about people.

At one point, she states, "I was only thinking about me," as if that were a good thing. And that's her problem right there.

There was a lot of profanity, especially the f-bomb and the names of God and Jesus used as curse words. The author also glorifies nudity and sex; there are many crude references to genitalia and sex acts.

The writing itself is a strange mixture of academic "big" words and a lack of sentence structure and fluidity. And the book was entirely too long and repetitive. It could have easily been cut in half. ( )

Painter, having reached some invisible turning point in her career as an historian (and an excellent and acclaimed one she is) wants to go to art school. Wants to follow the road less travelled but yearned for. She is 64 as she enters a bachelor's art major program at Rutgers a train ride from her home in New Jersey. From the start she feels--old. Also black, but mostly that is overshadowed by her sense that the young students can barely 'see' her. And yes, right along with that is the problem that faces the black artist. Do you represent everyone whose skin announces an African origin somewhere in your past, or do you follow your own weird? Either way your damned by some and ignored by the greater art world. Add to that, (as if the first two weren't enough) the 'anti-academic' stance of the art world, of the teachers towards people like herself, an acclaimed historian. Most believe that for Painter to become an Artist artist is beyond her reach, possibly by temperament and most probably by her years of historical training, research, methodology. Just. Can't. Also some of those teachers are wont to say, "You can't draw. You can't paint." What they really mean, she discovers is that they don't believe she can let go of her historical (academic) perspective and give herself up to- to- well that is just it, to what? The what is a paradigm shift (an expression I am loathe to use but is apt here) more than turning off all her past training she has to discover the power of the images themselves apart from anything coming from outside, drawing into herself the new ideas and approaches, then working and working until her unconscious (or something) does the final break, accessing everything that is boiling around inside her, until something new and authentic happens that can, when it works, speak directly to another person at many levels. That's art making. That's where I think she ends up. She uses all her knowledge and life wisdom but does not DIRECT it. Big difference. Being a writer and a logical person at heart, she writes her story for us step by step, so you do make the little leaps with her. Just because you've read my comments, they are not enough, the book is worth reading on your own especially if you are older and contemplating a sideways move. I learned a great deal about any number of black painters about whom I knew nothing and spent much time happily on the internet, looking looking looking.
****1/2 ( )

This unfortunately didn’t work for me; I think because I either missed something or the author never explained if she actually liked creating art. It’s an amazing accomplishment to decide to get a BFA and MFA in your sixties after you’ve been a renowned PhD historian, but why didn’t she just make stuff on her own instead? It actually is sad that I think she thought she needed the schooling for the legitimacy, but I’m not sure if she enjoyed it at all. Also her anger at her father’s depression was actually disturbing to me as she seemed to not have any empathy for mental illness at all. ( )

A mixed bag - maybe closer to an "it was OK" than "I liked it." As an art enjoyer with a degree in art history and absolutely ZERO talent of my own, I was interested in the experiences of someone with a passion for (Painter's phrase) "making art." So her explorations of learning to see, learning to look, muddling through different kinds of paper, drawing tools... the actual physical process of learning how to DRAW or PAINT were fascinating to me. Almost exactly her age, I could shake my head sympathetically over her invisibility, her status as a curiosity to her decades-younger fellow students. She writes vividly and well about this generational gap in the arts, how her own training and background and expectations of basic premises in art are completely irrelevant, even faintly ridiculous, to the current generation. The Art World, it turns out, is also pretty much the same deal as in The Literary World - a closed society, where certain stars are necessary to smoothe a path for younger wanna-be stars, and if you're not in the inner circle, you are going to have a very tough time of it. Kudos to her for sticking it out, discovering her own way to make art that no one can make but her. Painter does go on and on a bit, and we hear quite a lot too much of her fame and accomplishments in her academic career (not undeserved, but still...). She *is* privileged with money, support, and the ability to make choices many people cannot. As other readers have noted, she brings to attention many artists I was not familiar with, and I read parts of the book with iPad at hand to look them up, and learned a lot as we went. I wouldn't even mind buying her delightful ink sketch of her cat Ro (p. 115) - I love how she has caught the back-tilted ear, the way cats let you know they are keeping an "ear" on you while pretending ignore you.

Some very interesting aspects, and she seems like an ebullient character who might be fun to be be around (as she did on a PBS segment I saw). But the book needed some serious editing, and if you're not into art, art school, the art world, skip it. ( )