The Art of James Talmadge
t’s been 70 years since the time I first decided I wanted to be an artist. I was four.
Every night at our dinner table I would stare at what looked like a photo of three small fishing boats dragged up on shore with a pier off in the distance. It was in a simple wooden frame.
What intrigued me was that it really wasn’t a photo at all, it was a drawing, or more likely a copperplate etching which was common to that era.
From where I sat the boats looked so real that at first I did think it was a photo, but when I got closer the realism turned into a line drawing. Every time I was at the table I would look at that piece and think how wonderful it would be if I could draw something like that.
Perhaps it was a gradual process or if I had revelation about my future, but I recall vividly the feeling that I was going to be an artist. It was something I just knew. And from that time forward I have always thought of myself as an artist no matter where I was or what I did.
Like so many others my life has taken various unanticipated turns here and there but I have always seen this world through the eyes of an artist. It is just who I am and who I always wanted to be since I was four.