New York to Paris: Four Novembers
I moved here to Paris exactly 4 year ago, on November 1, 2009. Four years, one year shy of half a decade. November is the month of Thanksgiving for Americans, so I will start early.
Moving to Paris to paint, well, it took some adjustment and a good measure of forgetting.
The space where I work is small, around 200 square feet I would guess, compared to the 1000 square feet that I used to have in Bushwick. I needed to downsize and accept working from an easel as the practical choice. I no longer have the large white expanses of wall space available to paint on. Otherwise, I have continued to paint with a large working table next to me, with paints, brushes, etc. close by. Another habit I kept is the use of a large piece of glass on the table as my palette . . . no wooden palette yet, so my conversion to being an easel painter is not yet complete, at least I would like to think so.
Instead of going uptown to the Met, I go to the Right bank to the Louvre. I also travel a lot more now, Paris being so close to other Old World capitals. Of course, one speaks French here and not English.
The anonymity afforded by being an unknown entity in Paris, the freedom of being nobody at all, has taken a measure of forgetting the person that I was before moving here. Back in the US, I had embarked on another career, I had a steady and comfortable income, and was looking forward to all the usual prospects and expectations of becoming an attending physician. Back then, I always wondered how I would be able to continue painting after my residency and fellowships. I envisioned having to paint in my office in between cases . . . it turns out, one can't paint seriously part-time, and definitely one can't be a surgeon part-time.
I had read a memoir by the anthropologist Melvin Konner, "Becoming a Doctor" while I was finishing my MFA and before starting medical school. In it, he described how, for him, getting a medical degree was like an arrhythmia, he returned to academic anthropology after his four years of medical school. I guess it was the same for me, only my arrhythmia lasted longer, I also completed my post-graduate training, a total of 8 years of it, after the 4 years of medical school. It was a lot of training, and I think I was waiting for my next move, waiting to figure things out. At the end of the day, I went back to my roots, my first calling as it were, I chose to paint full-time again--I painted throughout my internship, residency and fellowships.
I have a lot to be thankful for. Very few people get a second chance. There are many people who go into medicine after another career. In my medical school class, there was another classmate who also had an MFA degree in painting. My second chance, having the chance to return to my first vocational calling, is extraordinary in that it was unexpected and literally something that I could not have imagined.
Moving to Paris to paint, well, it took some adjustment and a good measure of forgetting.
The space where I work is small, around 200 square feet I would guess, compared to the 1000 square feet that I used to have in Bushwick. I needed to downsize and accept working from an easel as the practical choice. I no longer have the large white expanses of wall space available to paint on. Otherwise, I have continued to paint with a large working table next to me, with paints, brushes, etc. close by. Another habit I kept is the use of a large piece of glass on the table as my palette . . . no wooden palette yet, so my conversion to being an easel painter is not yet complete, at least I would like to think so.
What was my loft in Bushwick, c. 2006.
Instead of going uptown to the Met, I go to the Right bank to the Louvre. I also travel a lot more now, Paris being so close to other Old World capitals. Of course, one speaks French here and not English.
The anonymity afforded by being an unknown entity in Paris, the freedom of being nobody at all, has taken a measure of forgetting the person that I was before moving here. Back in the US, I had embarked on another career, I had a steady and comfortable income, and was looking forward to all the usual prospects and expectations of becoming an attending physician. Back then, I always wondered how I would be able to continue painting after my residency and fellowships. I envisioned having to paint in my office in between cases . . . it turns out, one can't paint seriously part-time, and definitely one can't be a surgeon part-time.
I had read a memoir by the anthropologist Melvin Konner, "Becoming a Doctor" while I was finishing my MFA and before starting medical school. In it, he described how, for him, getting a medical degree was like an arrhythmia, he returned to academic anthropology after his four years of medical school. I guess it was the same for me, only my arrhythmia lasted longer, I also completed my post-graduate training, a total of 8 years of it, after the 4 years of medical school. It was a lot of training, and I think I was waiting for my next move, waiting to figure things out. At the end of the day, I went back to my roots, my first calling as it were, I chose to paint full-time again--I painted throughout my internship, residency and fellowships.
I have a lot to be thankful for. Very few people get a second chance. There are many people who go into medicine after another career. In my medical school class, there was another classmate who also had an MFA degree in painting. My second chance, having the chance to return to my first vocational calling, is extraordinary in that it was unexpected and literally something that I could not have imagined.
Comments
Post a Comment