To presume rather than learn the language leads to confusion

MY godfather, with whom I spent my early years, told me this during my first experiment with watercolour paints. He sensed my frustration as I attempted to interpret a colourful costume rather than identifying that the cloak was shrouded in shadows, which would require a mastery of hues and tones—a mastery that I had not yet wrestled with. So, at ten years old, I experienced frustration while trying to copy a painting of Napoleon returning from his first exile from an advertisement on the cover of Parade magazine. As a youth, I was fascinated by the elaborate 18th-century military costume of a tyrant, yet I was too unskilled to define its true nature. Back then, I believed that my watercolour paints were all an artist required.

My biological father saw art and design in the context of woodwork, especially furniture design. This perspective influenced me much later when designing items for my bachelor pad and then for my young studio. Conversations with my older brother eventually led to the creation of a company. However, we later parted ways for several reasons—more so due to his religious leaning. I still ponder his passing as a dark mystery with sinister implications, though I consider it a thing of the past.

I share all this because, in the realisation of any venture, much more is required than the enthusiasm of self-confidence, guesswork, and ego.

I have concluded that not all men share the same aesthetics. Thus, the ancients were wiser when they cultivated strict guilds. This system still existed while I was growing up, as the plumbers gathered at my godfather’s workshop, and the carpenters and furniture builders exchanged views at my father’s workshop. These were emulations of a past time that still worked effectively. Where it all fell apart was with modern systems of governance, especially when an awareness of understanding the echelons of growth was required—and yet, it was absent.

The alternative now rests with the difficult task of building a portal through which a conversation can occur in the common interest of talented souls. This must be done with clarity and good faith, forming a modern guild with loyalty to the awakened minds of our fathers—a time when their genius can once more serve, as before, a fertile cause.