"It takes half a lifetime"

Welcome to December's wild burn.

We're standing too close to a bonfire.

December is a mix of warmth and intensity, one moment from being out of control and golden feverish light that burns hotter, then burns urgently, and poof! It's gone.

That brings me to yesterday.

December brings out the wild "let's move things around" in me, right in the middle of the standard Holiday crush.

You know that master procrastination technique when you're avoiding real work by organizing your hall closet or obsessively cleaning out the silverware drawer?

Yep, yesterday. (actually everyday this week).

When I started going through some cardboard boxes full of papers, I knew I was sunk.

Then, a happy accident.

I re-discovered a few images of projects I did 15 years ago.

I distinctly heard my brain say "I did this?" Damn.

And then, the follow-up from "ye ole' brain".

"Damn lady, you were on to something. Why did you quit?"

That got me thinking and crying over spilled boxes.

Whether your past work pleasantly surprises you, or is cringe-worthy - those sketches from art school, the novel you abandoned halfway through, or photographs you've deemed "amateur"- there's usually a moment of recognition that is speaking to you.

You must trust THAT.

The thread of humanity that you were chasing even when you didn't know what you were chasing. Even when it was fumbling in the dark.

The real talent is believing in the unseeable vision and then obsessively pursuing it.

Gmail shortens emails in awkward places. Read online It’s better.

You're in fifth grade.

While your classmates are drawing stick figures and copying cartoon characters, you're staring at reproductions of Goya's Black Paintings in an art history book.

The dark, haunting images have you obsessed.

"In fifth grade I wanted to paint paintings like Goya's black paintings," Kerry James Marshall would later recall.

Most kids would flip the page, move on to the next shiny thing. But Marshall had what he calls "an unwavering desire" - that obsessive pursuit of the unseeable vision we just talked about.

At ten years old, Marshall already understood that he wanted to be part of something bigger than himself.

I read that and time slowed. "I had reached it before I got there."

Vision comes first. The technique follows. The recognition comes last.

The vision is just the beginning. BUT because you have the vision, the realization of that vision already exists somewhere, waiting.

"My whole developmental period was geared toward trying to know what they knew, whatever it was that made their work look the way it looked. I was struggling with simply trying to master the materials and the methodologies of making work."

Marshall wasn't trying to be original. He was trying to be good.

Marshall was obsessively studying the masters, learning how paint behaves, understanding color theory, mastering drawing.

Marshall had the patience to wait.

For decades.

"It takes half a lifetime, really, to develop to a point where you can start to speak effectively with whatever the tools are you're trying to master."

Half a lifetime. Let that sink in.

All around him the art world was chasing trends, galleries were looking for the next big thing, while other artists were pivoting and reinventing themselves, Marshall was obsessively, relentlessly pursuing that vision he'd had since fifth grade.

And then, something shifted.

"I don't think that started happening to me until about six years ago. Then I felt I had sufficiently mastered the forms and the materials of art-making, and the ideas that govern it, to be able to say something with it that was worthwhile."

Marshall didn't feel he could "speak effectively" with his art until 1992 - well into his career, after decades of practice and development.

Kerry James Marshall's 2017 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in LA was one of the most important exhibitions of contemporary art. Critics call him one of the most significant painters of our time.

That fifth-grader staring at Goya's Black Paintings was absolutely onto something.

He just had to trust the process long enough - half a lifetime - to get there.

Do I think we have to wait half a lifetime? Maybe. Does it matter?

Because if we're obsessively pursuing what calls us, the journey is equally as important as the result.

How many times are you going to hear someone say, "Be obsessive with your work"? I hope this counts as one and it sticks.

Check out Kerry James Marshall's work below.

*Did I mention he's from Birmingham, Alabama?

From birth until he was 8, he lived in Birmingham.

Do you remember what happened in 1963 in Birmingham when he was 8?

The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four Black schoolgirls - Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Carol Denise McNair?Members of the Ku Klux Klan planted 19 sticks of dynamite beneath the church steps. The explosion occurred during Sunday morning services.

His family moved to Watts, South Central LA, the epicenter of the Civil Rights movement and Black Power activism.

In 1965, when Marshall was 10, he witnessed the Watts riots - six days of uprising fueled by longstanding anger at racist and abusive practices by the LAPD, economic inequality, housing discrimination, and limited opportunities for Black residents.

Marshall has said: "You can't be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central near the Black Panthers headquarters, and not feel like you've got some kind of social responsibility."

He was filled up with social responsibility. But, according to him, it took half a lifetime to "speak effectively."

We better get started, or keep going. Either way, put another log on the fire.

An amazing look at Kerry James Marshall’s work from the 2017 Retrospective at MOCA.

https://moca.org/exhibition/kerry-james-marshall-mastry

And an interview with Kerry James Marshall.

The largest survey of Kerry James Marshall’s work in the UK is on display NOW at the Royal Academy of Arts until Jan. 18, 2026.

That’s it, friends!

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Kerry James Marshall, Benjamin Buchloh, Aria Dean: Kerry James Marshall: The Histories, Accompanying the largest UK survey to date of work by the legendary Chicago-based figurative painter. This volume is the most extensive publication on Kerry James Marshall to date, celebrating half a century of his work.

Teju Cole, Kerry James Marshall, Hal Foster : Kerry James Marshall: History of Painting, Kerry James Marshall is one of America’s greatest living painters. History of Painting presents a groundbreaking body of new work that engages with the history of the medium itself.

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Google it. Many museums have his work in their permanent collections.