You Never Know

You hear it all the time, but its true! You just never know what is going to happen, even in your own life. You might make choices, thinking they are going to take you one place, but in fact they lead you somewhere totally different. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes bad. But I tend to think that most often, if we're "doing all the right things" then our choices will lead us to good places with opportunities that will benefit us if we take advantage of them.

I was thinking about this today and thought about a painter named John Smibert. He was just an ordinary guy from Scotland trying to make it in the art world during the 1700's. He had experience painting houses and coach-doors, but, like the Little Mermaid, he wanted more. So he went to England and studied painting, and after that he went to Italy to try and learn from the old masters. There, in the pursuit of that higher dream--art--doing what he knew he should be doing to become an artist, he met a man that would change his life.

Reverend Berkeley was a minister with the great vision of a school in Bermuda where he would train Christian missionaries as well as teach the children of plantation owners how to live a Christian life, meanwhile doing some missionary work of his own. The thought in those days was that the Americas, indeed all of the "west," was a land of opportunity, a promised land, where men could find greater harmony by taming the wilderness and establishing an orderly, Protestant way of life. He asked Smibert to join him and his wife and several others in this adventure, and Smibert agreed.

No doubt Smibert imagined a new life, a secure job as an art teacher and an artist in a new place that had not really been documented yet in paintings. The first stop along the journey was in Newport, Rhode Island, where Smibert finished a painting of the "Bermuda Group" and awaited the funds for the school with Berkeley. The funds never came--Berkeley lost support and ended up going back to England, and no school was ever founded.

But Smibert realized that he had found something even better. He moved to Boston and set up a studio with artwork he'd done in England and Italy, as well as the "Bermuda Group" painting, and before he knew it, he had every rich man and woman in town asking him to paint their portrait, because no other artist in America at that time had been to Italy, let alone knew how to paint very well at all. He flourished in his new town, married, had kids, reigned for decades as the best artist in America, and was known far and wide for welcoming other artists into his studio to learn. Every portrait painter in America to follow was directly influenced by him. Who would have known, back in Scotland, that this would have happened?

So it just goes to show that you never know what's going to happen. That's how I feel in this city. I'm here to learn and grow, but where I'm headed--it's unknown. Anything could happen!