Sunday Reflections, 2.25.24 - Part 1 of 5

Sometimes I feel torn in two.  My life right now is graced by concurrent passions / practices.  On one hand, as readers of this newsletter already know, is my life as a practicing artist, both a creator of visual artwork, and the person in charge of advertising and selling that work, and more broadly, moving the art career forward.

On the other side of myself, far less intellectual but just as engaged, is a practice entering its 24th (discontinuous) year, the sport of rowing.  I started rowing as a middle schooler during a summer camp in 7th grade, just for a week, but loved it instantly, from day one stroke one.  Since, the sport has taken me all over the world, and introduced me to some of my closest friends, lifetime highlight experiences, and most meaningful learnings.  The backbone of my current art-buying patronage is (despite my best efforts to reach broader audiences!) still, the rowing community, more accurately labeled the rowing family.

In fall of 2020, I stopped rowing completely, after 20 continuous years.  The sport had given me more than I could ever have asked for or imagined, and I knew that to move forward more rigorously in my art practce, I would be ok with leaving oars, boat and boathouse behind.  When I stopped, I really (truly!) had no intentions of ever rowing again.  I wasn’t upset, I wasn’t sad, I was completely at peace with the sport, and wanted to do other things in life, widen my perspective, see what else was out there.  For 20 years my main concern and guiding compass had been a pursuit of improvement in the sport of rowing.  At that time, fall of 2020, I knew that pursuing improvement in my artwork was more important to me.  Once that feeling is true, pursuing rowing at the level I enjoyed pursuing it (go as fast as possible) becomes a really difficult, almost insincere task.

The impossible (and I do mean impossible) dream when I started competing in rowing in 2001, was to one day make a US National Team, to wear the National Team unisuit, paint the blades red white and blue, and represent at the World Rowing Championships.  11 years in, in 2011, I was injured, burnt out from my masters degree program, and told by medical professionals that living an injury-free life was at stake, forget about rowing ever again.  I had come close to making the US team, a combined 5 seconds of losing at trials over the previous three years, where races take between 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 minutes.  I figured, well, that’s it then, the dream will remain a dream.

Except… I couldn’t help myself.  I knew I wanted to row, and row really fast, and be in touch with what drew me to the sport initially, which was the feeling of being strong, fit, rowing well, and moving the boat as fast as possible in a race - a feeling that becomes almost easy, even though you’re pushing yourself to your limits.  It is the closest to a feeling of flying that I’ve experienced.  Rowers from the novice to Olympic level describe a similar feeling.  The feeling is addictive, and had driven me (and many others) to train year-round, twice or three times a day, in pursuit of that feeling, in pursuit of transcending the everyday experiences of life, and being in touch with something that seems impossible.

Sitting on my back porch, this Sunday morning, the wind blowing and chilling my fingers, the dog wondering why I’m typing instead of throwing his ball for him, my sketchbook notes in front of me, along with a graphite portrait of my girlfriend… it occurs to me I should share the relevancy of this nostalgia.  The sport of rowing, once upon a time, was my gateway to doing impossible things.  Out of injury and hopelessness, I worked my ass off, coming back from severe disc injury that summer of 2011 to making my first US National Team in 2012, a confluence of incredible events, rare and generous and driven people around me, true friendships, and… well…. Luck!  I have never been the “stud” of the boat, never the strongest guy.  My role was to barely hang in there physiologically, and to share an enthusiasm that was contagious, along with a fairly decent (I think) perception of what kind of technique and feelings in the boat will generate the fastest possible speed for the effort being put out by the athletes, including myself.  I have been a great teammate, an awful teammate, an asset and a liability, but through all this I was always trying to improve, tying to learn, trying to somehow find some peace in the anachronistic pursuit of using oars to move a boat.

One National Team eventually turned into five.  I couldn’t believe it.  There was even a bronze medal in a hard-fought race in 2015, which I never expected, even when it happened.  Thinking of that moment now, it barely seems real.  Impossible things became events in reality.

Sometimes I see the two pursuits, rowing and artwork, as unrelated.  I don’t intentionally mix the worlds.  I don’t seek out to make art about rowing (anymore!), and I don’t always know how what I’ve learned in the world of rowing, or sport in general, applies to the world of art.  Maybe, sometimes, the lessons are non-transferrable, but the reason I bring up rowing in this written piece, is that even this week, I was reminded of how valuable it can be to challenge oneself, to be open to impossible things, to realize that I really don’t have any idea what is possible until I am on the ground (or on the water) trying it out.