Romaine Brooks

In putting together an author’s page there is always a tendency to want to limit oneself to whatever current project one is working on. In my case, this is especially hard since I tend to be Jane of many trades; art critic, art historian, artist, avid reader with catholic tastes, beach bum, book reviewer, cat lover, classical music appreciator, culture critic, diarist, dog walker, editor, equistrian, film critic, film noir nut, fine arts appraiser, gourmet, lover of wine, meditator, music critic, opera fan, photographic critic, political observer, poet, public intellectual, theorist, and many other things I look forward to learning about in the future. Simply put I live a very rich and interesting life with no time to waste.I have made images since birth to the dismay of my mother who spent hours removing my drawings from kitchen and living room walls as well as trying to salvage finger painted party dresses that I had decorated. My writings also adorned dinning room and bedroom walls of the houses we lived in.Finding one’s own voice as a writer, I suppose, is the primary goal for me. This hasn’t been easy. Being multitalented means one is a “many spendored” being. Making choices and growing into them is hard to do. Add to this the necessity of making a living and you have the fundamental artistic temperment’s on-going challenges. In my case this meant learning how to conform to the basic academic formula, first you tell em, then you show em, and then you tell em again, style of writing which to my mind tends to stiffle creativity. Learning how to do this caused a near mental breakdown and is a form I have never felt at home in. Nevertheless, I met the challenge and developed a rather distinctive voice in this genre. Strangely enough, I stopped writing poetry for most of the time that I developed this skill. As I devoted myself to my career as an academic I found that I had little or no time for painting and had to be content with drawing. This went on for more years than I care to describe here. Moreover, I even stopped writing fiction. It seemed as if my mind had been split in two and severed from my soul by this process.Fortunately, writers and artists are born not made. I believe that forms can be taught but that this an artist does not make. It is innate and the real challenge is to discipline and train oneself so that one can access their creativity and say whatever it is they have inside them to say. I am not alone in my opinion in this regard.Walt Whitman, one of my favorite poets and writers, said, “stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun. . . . there are millions of suns left, you shall no longer take things at second or third hand.” This is my wish for you in reading what I have written, what I think–that you think for yourself and make meaning out of what I have given — for yourselves.