ten commandments

My grandmother painting at SAGA (Senior Adults for Great Achievement), Ambler, PA in the 1990s

When my grandmother, Mary Ione MacLaughlin, passed away in 2001 my family and I inherited an unending amount of artwork. Her artwork. Oil paintings, water colors, pencil drawings, pen and ink drawings, designs for ballet costumes and ballet sets from the 1930s, pastel drawings, sketches, sketchbooks and boxes full of scraps of paper, from magazines to pictures to quotations, all things that she found inspiring. Her home studio was always a bit of organized chaos, so it was a daunting task to sort through everything. As my father, mother, aunt and I tried to make some order out of a lifetime of artwork, we stumbled onto quite a few treasures. Maybe no one else would find them treasures, but since my grandmother was the first person who introduced me to the world of art, the first person to put a paintbrush in my hand, the first person to hand me a book of Monet paintings...I thought that everything she ever created was a treasure. I still do think that. I'm her biggest fan. So here is one of her "treasures"that I found shoved into one of her sketch books. Today, I carry a copy of this list in my own sketch book.

The Artist's Ten Commandments

I. You shall draw everything and everyday

II. You shall not wait for inspiration, for it comes not while you wait but while you work

III. You shall forget all you think you know and even more, all you have been taught

IV. You shall not adore your good drawings and promptly forget your bad ones

V. You shall not draw with exhibitions in mind nor to please any critic but yourself

VI. You shall trust none but your own eye and make your hand follow it

VII. You shall consider the mouse you draw as more important than the contents of all the museums in the world, for

VIII. you shall love the 10,000 things with all your heart and every blade of grass as yourself

IX. Let each drawing be your first, a celebration of the eye awakened

X. You shall not worry about "being of your time", for you are your time, and it is brief