Whenever I feel “behind” in my creative career, I remind myself of this tweet by Douglas Murano:
In our youth-obsessed culture, we love to celebrate the precocious talent that reaches the summits of success before puberty. We champion the 13 year old gold Olympian, the 17 year old Nobel Prize winner, and the 19 year old who revolutionized the internet.
While I cheer the kids along, I’m also reminded that for many, youth is an open-field of possibility: a time when our bodies and mind are sharpest, and our responsibilities often limited. It can be a fertile ground to discover and nurture our natural talents.
There’s often an underlying collective belief that if we haven’t “made it” by a certain age, then we’re bound to never “get there.” But who measures the ladder and who draws the finish line?
While I used to envy those who discover their innate gifts so early in life, I have an even deeper appreciation for those who continue searching when the buds of their talent don’t show in the early Spring of life.
Nature has its own rhythm. A California poppy can bloom in just 8 weeks, while the Madagascar Palm flowers after 100 years. That palm doesn’t compare itself to the poppy. It doesn’t attempt to grow faster than its own biology. It also doesn’t give up on blooming after 80 years, it simply keeps on growing until it’s time to reveal its petals.
Just like plants, we can’t control our own nature, but a nurturing environment can affect the blooming process. Hidden seeds below the ground, our talents are within us all along. Sometimes, they peer out but we ignore them, preferring to pursue greener pastures. Other times, they lay dormant for years, until life’s circumstances brings them forth.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and often the driver of creativity. In ‘Daily Rituals,’Mason Currey recounts how Frances Trollope didn’t start writing until she was 53, “only because she desperately needed money to support her six children and ailing husband. In order to squeeze the necessary writing time out of the day while still acting as the primary caregiver to her family, Mrs Trollope sat down at her desk each day at 4:00 A.M and completed her writing in time to serve breakfast.”
Other times, the pressures of life delay the creative window of life. Artist Helen Downie always wanted to be an artist when she was younger. She told Vanity Fair, “But somewhere from the age of 14 through to 48, I forgot. I just forgot, and then one day walking down the road I remembered.” After years of motherhood, addiction, and breast cancer, she picked her paintbrush again.
Gender and race have a deep impact on the “late-blooming” effect. Historically, women and racial minorities had restricted access to artistic education or opportunities, so it’s not a coincidence that the late-bloomers I featured below belong to those groups. Like the wildflowers that manage to burst out of concrete cracks, they often have to summon incredible resilience, courage and faith to discover and express their talents.
Certain artworks also demand the maturity of decades of experience, both in craft and life. The most poignant works often transmute raw lived experience into art. In Georgia O’Keeffe words: “Great artists don’t just happen. They have to be trained, and in the hard school of experience.”
It takes a lifetime “To know thyself,” as Plato suggests. Our creative gifts can change and evolve as we discover new layers of ourselves. In his book, “Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed With Early Achievement,” Rich Karlgaard writes about the idea of “serial blooming.” He believes that it’s often in the natural course of development to try different things, that “we bloom and bloom again.”
Or as David Fincher and Eric Roth beautifully wrote in their screenplay ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’:
“For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”
Today’s Seven Senses full moon edition highlights 7 late-blooming artists who discovered their talents within the sensory realm: SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.
In Joy,
Sabrina
SEE
Grandma Moses | Painter
Watch short doc
Born in 1860, Anna Robertson didn’t start painting in earnest until she was 77, after which her work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Growing up in upstate New York, she was sent to work on a neighboring farm at the age of 12. She married when she was 27 and moved to a farm in Virginia, raising five children. In addition to childcare and farm work, Robertson also sold various homemade goods.
As featured in the documentary, Grandma took to painting brushes “when her hands could no longer sew as she thought they should.” Known as a folk artist, she painted the countryside scenes she had grown up with – which became associated with an idyllic image of rural America.
In 1938, an art collector discovered Moses’ paintings in the window of a pharmacy and purchased them for $3 to $5 each. The following year, Moses was included in a group show at the Museum of Modern Art.
Her work became a symbol of American holidays, with companies such as Hallmark reproducing Grandma Moses’ work on greetings cards, fabrics and ceramics. As art historian Judith Stein states: "A cultural icon, the spry, productive nonagenarian was continually cited as an inspiration for housewives, widows and retirees."
HEAR
Ann Rabson | Blues Pianist
Listen on Spotify, Youtube, Apple Music
It’s rare to find late bloomers in the field of music, where most instrumentalists learn their craft before they reach a two-digit age. But there are always exceptions to the norm – including Ann Rabson.
Rabson started her professional music career at the age of 17 as a blues singer-guitarist, but it wasn’t until she was 35 years old that she started learning the piano. Against the popular claim that it’s difficult to learn an instrument as an adult, Rabson’s found that: "When you're 35 you have a better attitude. You take more risks."
A couple years after learning the piano, she formed the all-female trio, Saffire – The Uppity Blues Women, and shared the stage with blues legends such as Ray Charles, B.B. King, and Koko Taylor. The trio, grew a loyal following and released eight studio albums, known for their double-entendre lyrics that extolled “the joys of sex, carousing and the mixed pleasures of middle age.”
SMELL
Norah Lindsay | Landscape Artist
Read her biography
The daughter of aristocrats, Norah Lindsay grew up amongst England’s country house elite. When one googles her name, the term “socialite” comes up. Lunching with Winston Churchill, vacationing with Edith Wharton, or cocktailing with Vivien Leigh was common occurrence for Lindsay.
Much like Frances Trollope, Norah Lindsay started her creative career out of necessity. At the age of 51, her life took an unexpected turn when her marriage fell apart and she faced financial ruin. Her interest in gardening saved both her spirits and her dire finances. She embarked on a garden design career, gaining commissions from her elite past peers, ranging “from the gardens of quiet English manor houses to the grand estates of the country house set, to royal gardens in France, Germany, Italy and Yugoslavia.”
According to her biographer Allison Hayward, Lindsay woke up at 5 every morning to go over the planting list. Since she could no longer afford a car, she traveled by bus or train to the nurseries to search for the materials she needed. It was a radical change from the life she had once live, but it offered an outlet for her artistic talents to be expressed.
TASTE
Julia Child | Chef
Watch the documentary ‘Julia’
The legendary chef Julia Child was 49 when she wrote her first cookbook. And she was 51 by the time she made her debut on TV with the cooking show ‘The French Chef.’
She graduated from Smith College, and later wrote in her memoir, ‘My Life in France’: “I knew I didn’t want to become a standard housewife, or a corporate woman, but I wasn’t sure what I did want to be.”
Prior to discovering her passion for cooking, she worked in advertising, and “helped develop shark repellent used on underwater explosives during WWII.” During her service, she met her husband Paul with whom she moved to Paris. Her arrival in France was the catalyst for a love affair with French food.
If you’d like to take a deeper dive into Julia Child, I highly recommend reading this Noted piece by Jillian Hess and this Time Travel feature by Jolene Handy.
TOUCH
Noah Purifoy | Sculptor
Learn more online and visit the museum
"I do not wish to be an artist. I only wish that art enables me to be." — Noah Purifoy (1963)
Before turning to art, Noah Purifoy earned teaching and social work degrees. He was “the first African American to enroll in Chouinard Art Institute as a full-time student” and graduated just before turning 40.
Known for his assemblage sculpture, one of his earliest work was constructed out of charred debris from the 1965 Watts rebellion, and became the “basis for 66 Signs of Neon, the landmark 1966 group exhibition on the Watts riots that traveled throughout the country.”
In 1989, Purifoy moved his practice out to Joshua Tree desert where he spent the rest of his life creating ten acres of large-scale sculptures from found junked materials. Since his passing in 2004, his life’s work has become an outdoor museum, open to the public.
BALANCE
Diana Nyad | Swimmer
Watch film on Netflix
I admit I knew nothing about Diana Nyad ‘s incredible journey, until seeing the Oscar-nominated film ‘Nyad’ a couple months ago. The movie was an incredible portrayal not only of an athlete defying human boundaries, but also of a complex person, portrayed so poignantly by Annette Benning.
At the age of 64, Diana Nyad succeeded on her fifth attempt to swim from Havana Cuba to Key West, Florida – a distance of 100 miles (180km). She had been a talented competitive long-distance swimmer from a young age, setting records in her very first race.
Perhaps born to defy expectations, she was expelled from Emory University “for jumping out a fourth-floor dormitory window wearing a parachute.”
By the age of 26, Nyad broke the long-time held record of swimming around the island of Manhattan in under 8 hours. A couple years later, she attempted her first Havana-Key West mission. After 42 hours of swimming, she had to be removed from the ocean due to strong winds and swells that were pushing her off to Texas.
Thirty years later, at the age of 60, Nyad started training again for the Havana-Key West crossing. Between 2011 and 2013, Nyad attempted the swim four times and succeeded on her fifth endeavor. When asked about her motivation, she would answer: "Because I'd like to prove to the other 60-year-olds that it is never too late to start your dreams."
ENVISION
Barbara Hillary | Explorer
A native New Yorker, Barbara Hillary grew up in an impoverished neighborhood, raised by a widowed mother. Despite the conditions, she shared that "there was no such thing as mental poverty in our home.” She spent most of her time reading, and her favorite book was the adventure novel ‘Robinson Crusoe.’
After earning both a Bachelor’s and master's degree in gerontology, she worked as a nurse for 55 years. Once she retired, Hillary started seeking adventures in Canada, photographing polar bears in Manitoba and dog-sledding in Quebec.
Upon learning that no black woman had reached the North Pole, she made it her mission to become the first one. Her wish was granted in 2007, when she became the first black woman, and at 75, one of the oldest people to set foot on the North Pole,
In 2011, she set another record by becoming the first African-American woman to stand on the South Pole, at age 79.
The "bloom again and again" analogy is so potent. Even when we bloom later, we have the opportunity to begin again every day till our last breath. Transformation is a continuous process.
Wonderful. I'm 71 and almost finished my PhD thesis, which is due for submission in August. I had to wait till my kids had grown up and I had retired before I was free to fulfil this dream.