Getting Started
My brother, me and my dad at the Grand Canyon
Hello, thanks for visiting my blog.
I'm assuming you are interested in art and possibly want to be an artist. I hope you will find things on my blog and/or website that interest and inspire you.
I've had a bit of a difficult time getting my blog going. My art journey has been a challenging one with so many ups and downs that I was hesitant to write about it for fear it might actually discourage others.
Gradually, however, by talking to people, especially other artists, I've come to realize that these ups and downs are the norm and that many people are encouraged by hearing about a fellow artist's struggles.
In particular, as I've gotten older, I've had some physical issues that often just come with the profession, (hand, wrist and shoulder pain and in my case, back surgery, etc). Early in my career I met illustrators who had wrist braces because of tendinitis or carpal tunnel. At the time I didn't think much of it until it hit me. Then it became, not just a physical issue, but a mental one, (“Will this get better?”, “What if it keeps getting worse?”, “Should I stop drawing entirely or work through it?”).
I was very reluctant to share these kinds of struggles. I'm one who tends to be protective of his privacy so, again, I hesitated to put these issues out there, particularly in a public place. It was one thing to share my doubts and fears with a close friend and quite another to put them up for all to see.
However, once again, over time I've found these things to be much more common than I realized. It seems a disproportionate percentage of artistic people struggle with stress, anxiety and depression. So, once again, I thought that sharing things may help others who might be facing similar issues.
So that said, here goes.
Me. Age nine.
My name is Paul Didier. I’m an illustrator and fine artist. I’m approaching this blog with two objectives in mind.
First, it’s a continuation of discussions I often have with other artists about our inspirations and motivations that caused us to get into art in the first place, but more importantly, to stay in art through all the challenges, (mental, physical and financial), that most artists are forced to contend with if they stick with it. These discussions are often where I find myself re-energized and motivated to keep going and sometimes where I see what may be an answer to something in my work, or in my thought processes that I’ve been struggling with.
Second, is the most challenging for me. It’s the desire to think through my life, particularly my life in art, and step back to see it objectively to find ways that I’ve done things that have worked and to identify things that I’ve done and may still be doing that haven’t worked.
I suppose it’s like writing a journal with the hope that I’ll learn more by setting down the sequence of events and reviewing it, hopefully, objectively. So, while it’s definitely auto-biographical, it will hopefully be much more concerned with influences, challenges and efforts to put these to good use and to reflect honestly on mistakes I’ve made. Part of this is discussing honestly things that are way out of my comfort zone to discuss publicly. This particularly applies to physical and emotional challenges including struggles with anxiety, stress, ADHD and depression. I’ll try not to dwell on these issues, but when pertinent I’ll mention them.
I grew up in Southern California. My family was very middle class. Both my parents worked and I had an older brother, Chris, and a cat, Howard. (Howard was definitely my best friend for most of my early years). Although he probably often found me very hyper and more than a bit challenging.
My cat, Howard, who I loved dearly and who never scratched me as much as I deserved.
Me, learning to walk in the hospital.
At that time, there was no diagnosis for it, but much later, in my adult years, I was diagnosed as being severely ADHD. When I read up on it I found quite a few of my childhood, and adult, struggles began to make more sense.
My early childhood was most notable for my having to be hospitalized at six months of age with Valley Fever. My illness was unusual in that it settled in my throat.The doctors were very honest with my parents, telling them they did not think I would survive and to make plans accordingly. I was given a tracheotomy and placed in isolation for ten months. Each week I was anesthetized so the tracheotomy could be cleaned out. At the end of the ten months I was allowed to go home and in a few more months was pronounced cured.
Many people express quite a bit of sympathy over my having to be hospitalized away from my parents, especially my mother, at this early age. I actually think I probably benefited in some ways. My mom, while verbally quite loving, was never much of a “hugger.” Being in intensive care/isolation at this age, surrounded by nurses, probably resulted in my getting more affection than 99 out of 100 infants raised at home. After all, even the most affectionate mother gets tired and has to sleep. I was surrounded by nurses working in shifts. I would imagine there was never a time when, if I cried for attention, there wasn’t a nurse on call, who was relatively rested, to come see how I was doing. Later in life my mother and grandmother told me often how loving the nurses were. One of them actually sent me birthday cards every year until I was nearly twenty years old!
The reason I mention being hospitalized like this, however, is that it may have contributed, or caused, my ADHD.
About 18 years ago my wife was researching issues associated with children on the spectrum. While reading about ADD and ADHD she said, “You know Paul, this sounds a lot like you.” After reading the article and many others, I had to agree with her. Eventually I sought out The Drake Institute in Irvine, California. I was particularly interested in them because they emphasized treating ADD and ADHD without drugs.
During my first discussions with the doctors they were extremely interested in my early stay in the hospital. They told me that research had shown that if a person was anesthetized even once as an infant it significantly increased the likelihood of developing ADD or ADHD later in life.
As I mentioned above, I was anesthetized once a week for ten months, which comes to about forty times before the age of two. The Drake doctors were stunned when they heard this and rather intrigued at how I’d managed to find ways to focus as well as I had.
Suddenly a great deal of my life started making sense. In addition to being distracted and all over the place as a kid, I seemed to have dozens of projects going at the same time, rarely finishing any of them. As a teen, when my friends were partying and drinking and smoking pot, I seemed to be much more interested in stimulants. To this day I’m a huge caffeine fiend despite having chronic sleep issues.
I’m a big believer in good being able to come out of difficulties. ADHD is a prime example of this for me. While incredibly challenging on many fronts, there are aspects of living with it that I believe have helped me. If you have difficulty focusing, are easily distracted and have trouble sitting still, you will obviously have to come up with ways to get yourself to finish anything half way decently.
Before I ever knew ADHD existed, (I was told I just wasn’t paying attention, or didn’t have discipline, etc), I started creating “games” to finish chores. For example, if I had to pull a bunch of weeds, (this was excruciatingly boring), I would imagine some dire consequence happening, either to me or someone I cared about, unless I could clear a certain area of weeds in a certain amount of time. I would sometimes use a villain from the comic books I was reading or movies I’d seen and then tell myself if I could pull the weeds in less than a specific period of time, say fifteen minutes, I’d foil the villain’s plan. I found if I really visualized the story I could get some serious intensity going towards doing something I really didn’t want to do at all. I went on to apply variations of this to lots of chores over the years.
In addition to helping me find ways to focus, I believe this helped me to begin creating stories at a very early age and it helped me visualize the stories I was creating in my mind.