"A Growing Tendency," 2009, charcoal, 76x42", is by Brad Guarino, a former biochemist who studied, and now teaches, art. (Image at Guarino's Web site)
By Daniel Grant
A fairly typical art-school question: Lynda Michaud Cutrell, a fifth-year student at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, sought help in mixing the right colors for her painting. A less typical question in art school: Some of Cutrell’s teachers sought her help managing their 401(k)s.
“A number of them wanted to show me their investment portfolios,” she said. “Someone asked me, ‘Should I stay with Merrill Lynch?’ It’s kind of cool and kind of weird.”
Cutrell’s entire presence at the art school is cool and weird. For 25 years, after receiving her M.B.A. from Suffolk University, she worked in a number of advanced sales and marketing positions, including at Fidelity Investments (manager), State Street Corp. (vice president), and Thomson Financial (senior vice president), before quitting in 2005 to go to art school. “Here I am, a 50-year-old person surrounded by people less than half my age who had more skills than me.”
Unlike most of her classmates, money wasn’t an issue. Cutrell had earned enough on Wall Street to hold her comfortably (by her calculations) for 35 years, although she was well aware that “I will never earn in my life as an artist as much as I would have if I had worked just one more year on Wall Street.”
Vanity? Second childhood?
“Art is something I wanted to do early on,” Cutrell said, “but I was a single mom, so I put my art away and went to business school.” Plenty of other people with an interest in art take continuing-education classes, and Boston’s museum school offers those, “but I wanted the whole nut,” she said.
Efrain Cerrato, who is in his last year of a bachelor-of-fine-arts program at the Laguna College of Art & Design, worked 18 years as a personal-fitness trainer before becoming a full-time art student, while Brad Guarino was a biochemist for a dozen years before chucking that to study painting at Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts in Connecticut (he is now a member of the art faculty at the University of Connecticut).
Morgan Walker's "Entry of Hebe into Roseburg" (Hotel Max, Seattle). Image from Walker's Web site.
Morgan Walker earned a law degree and worked as an in-house lawyer for a restaurant chain before deciding that “law just wasn’t right for me. I always wanted to be an artist.” He returned to school in 1993, earned a B.F.A., then an M.F.A., and now teaches painting and art history at Pacific Northwest College of Art, in Portland, Ore. Another M.B.A., Lesa Chittenden Lim, left Honeywell Inc., were she had worked for 20 years, most recently as president and general manager, to earn an art degree at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, in Philadelphia. In 2007, her total compensation amounted to $453,682; if she adds up all the sales of her photographs, prints, and paintings in 2010, she grossed about $30,000. Obviously, “money wasn’t the driver,” she said. “I had done well in the corporate world, but I loved art and wanted to make a go of it.”
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So far, an inspirational story—second chances at happiness in life. But older, second-career artists and “nontraditional” students pose challenges for art schools and the commercial art world that are not easy to overcome. Everyone loves the exciting young talent, but there is less desire to invest in the promise of someone who is middle-age or less likely to enjoy a long career. Grandma Moses may have started late—she had her first solo show at age 80 and still lived another 21 years—and both Henri Matisse and Vassily Kandinsky turned to art after pursuing other professions, but there are few major figures in today’s art world who had a different career first.
Other than actuarial concerns, gallery owners question the commitment to a professional full-time art career of someone who has already committed him- or herself to something else, such as children or a job. Michael Severin, a painter in Sonoma, Calif., who retired after 37 years at age 55 from the U.S. Postal Service, where he had been a processing-plant manager, noted that he once was in conversation with a West Coast gallery owner who “liked my work and seemed to be on the point of wanting to represent me, but I made the mistake of saying that I paint because I love to paint, which she didn’t want to hear.” What she seemed more interested in hearing, Severin concluded, was that he was willing to do whatever it takes to get his work into certain collections and have exhibits in more and more prestigious museums. “Because I have a pension, I think she believed I don’t feel the pressure to sell my work and advance my career,” he said.
Many people in one field or another who dream of being artists take continuing-education art classes at a college or art school with the hope of making a gradual transition. Others jump right into art-school degree programs. At the undergrad level, a number of art schools offer diplomas for older students who already earned baccalaureates elsewhere, requiring those students to take only the studio classes. These days, according to instructors and administrators at art schools, one finds one or two older, second-career, or “nontraditional” students in every graduating class.
There are some clear benefits to having students with more life experience. “Older students stabilize the class,” said Jeffrey Carr, senior vice president for academic affairs at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. “They’re calm, on time, meticulously prepared, attentive. They take notes, they’re respectful and don’t act out.” What’s more, “they may make huge gifts” to the school, Carr said, noting two large printing presses that were purchased for the printmaking department by one former second-career alumnus.
The first year of art school tends to be the most difficult for these older students, who find their classmates are half their age—perhaps the age of their children—and view them suspiciously as someone’s parents rather than as fellow artists in training.
“I walk into a class and people assume I’m the teacher, and they start asking me questions,” said Carol Daynard, a retired assistant superintendent of schools in Newton, Mass., who earned a diploma from Boston’s museum school in 2009.
Developing bonds with other students rarely comes easily. “I didn’t go to their parties or talk about the things they talk about, if it wasn’t specifically about art,” said Susan Strauch of Mission Viejo, Calif., who quit office work after 25 years to attended the Laguna College of Art & Design. “People were in a very different place in their lives.”
Older people who have been successful in other ventures may find the lack of deference shown to them jarring, at least at first.
“I was a manager,” Cutrell said. “I set directives and objectives. I’ve gone down to Wall Street and given presentations to Goldman Sachs. I came to art school, and no one was listening to me.”
At times, older students develop stronger bonds with their instructors, to whom they are closer in age, than with their fellow students. But the instructors may also feel intimidated by older students who have done so much better financially than they might ever hope to do. Cutrell noted it has not been easy finding faculty members willing to act as mentor to her in the development of her work and career. She attributed that to the sense that “I don’t present as needy. There’s a strange awkwardness in dealing with people: You’re not the student that people want to help and nurture.”
From the standpoint of art-school faculty and administrators, second-career and older students present challenges.
“Life experience and maturity are certainly a plus,” said Perin Mahler, dean of fine art at Laguna, “but being in a position where they are no longer in a state of authority has been a problem with some students.” He said many of these students feel anxiety about their age and being behind younger students in skill development; some are used to “getting service and pull entitlement stuff.” Art-class critiques, which can be nerve-wracking to students at any age, can seem like a slap in the face to someone who is not accustomed to that style of frankness and egalitarianism. On a deeper level, Mahler said that older students have ways of doing things, “modalities that are more set in stone than you find in younger students.
“It’s easier in your 20s to remake yourself,” he said. “An older student will find that breaking down ways of working is traumatic.”
Jeffrey Carr agreed, saying that “it’s harder for people who are older to adapt and respond and come up with an entirely new approach to things.
“You have 20-somethings in art classes who sit there slack-jawed, milling around, not appearing to pay any attention to what’s going on,” he said. “But then you see them make huge conceptual leaps, which is so remarkable and rewarding. Then, you have many of the older students, who are paying close attention to what is being said and taking notes, but they’re not as open to trying something new. In art school, you’re not supposed to be a good student; you’re supposed to move away from the teacher and be amazing, startling. Some of the older students have a more difficult time with that.”
“Older students don’t want to make a mess; their studios are generally spotless,” said Susan Stephenson, an associate professor of painting and drawing at Lyme Academy College of Fine Art. “I think that can be stunting to the creative process.” She also noted that older graduates often take a “ferociously professional approach to their art careers. I receive announcements from them about upcoming exhibits and where their work can be purchased, but I don’t see that same tenacity in their art. The work itself seems somewhat tame.”
If the traditional-age student may sometimes appear impressionable or empty-headed, older students may have too much to keep track of, especially if they also need to keep working. Philadelphia Academy’s director of admissions, Stan Greidus, said a full-time stint at art school isn’t an easy fit for all second-career students, who are sometimes in a “sandwich generation,” he said, “distracted by having children in college and parents in nursing homes. It’s clear they’re struggling with a number of things, and a four-year program like ours may just be too much.”
Ultimately, art instructors and gallery owners try to determine how serious the art career is for the older, emerging artist. Does a guaranteed pension make an artist less “hungry” to produce work, exhibit and promote it, and generate sales? Maybe, and maybe not.
“It takes a lot of energy and will power to pursue galleries, and sometimes the energy isn’t there,” Michael Severin said.
On the other hand, Lesa Chittenden Lim said that knowing that she doesn’t “have 50 years to establish an art career makes me more avid about doing everything right now,” and she has made use of her connections in the business world to generate opportunities for exhibitions and some sales.
“People think it’s interesting to read about the background I have,” she said. “It’s a nice selling point.”
Daniel Grant is the author of several books on the arts, all published by Allworth Press, including The Business of Being an Artist (4th edition, 2010), Selling Art Without Galleries (2006) and The Fine Artist’s Career Guide (2nd edition, 2004). He has been a features reporter at Newsday and The Commercial-Appeal, a contributing editor for American Artist magazine, and a regular contributor to ARTnews magazine and the Wall Street Journal.
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