Mentors

Artists are always studying with other artists, it seems. Beginners study under more advanced instructors, of course, but good artists find even better artists to work with. Often this isn’t a formal teacher-pupil relationship but rather an association of friends, or associates who become friends.

For example, Mary Cassatt worked with Edgar Degas, even though the curmudgeonly Degas had a low opinion of woman painters. Degas believed the artist should live and work alone, but he nevertheless studied etching with his friend Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic, one of the original Impressionists noted for his skill with etchings Lepic’s etching of his dog Chaos). Lepic was also a skilled marine painter (The Wrecked Boat) who worked with Eugene Boudin, (The Beach at Villerville), who in turn was a mentor to young Claude Monet and let his name and prestige to the first Impressionist counter-salon even though he himself didn’t exhibit in it.

Writers have mentors, too, of course — people we turn to for feedback and advice. But too often I hear writers talking as if the only thing a mentor could do for them is introduce them to their agent. It seems like writers aren’t prone to work together the way artists are. You don’t very often hear a writer say, “I’m not very good at dialogue, so I’m going to spend the summer working with Joe Blow. His dialogue is just the bomb.”

I suspect the reasons are partly economic. It’s expensive being an artist — studio space, model fees, and all the rest add up, and it’s not surprising artists learn to work together in order to spread out the cost. Even introverted artists learn to work in groups.

And part of it seems to stem from the structured nature of education in the US. Joe Blow won’t have a bunch of young writers following him around day to day, but he might well be teaching summer seminars in how to write dialogue, or evening classes about fiction writing. Beginning writers will take classes, or buy books. We almost never work one on one.

I don’t know that one way is better than the other. But every time I sit down to write the morning after art class, I feel the difference rather sharply.