I’m an artist and I love what I do but
I’m not here to tell you all about how
great it is to be an artist or how you
should all make art your career in fact
paying less attention to what others say
you should or shouldn’t do and more
attention to what interests you and what
you’re capable of doing is what I’m here
to talk to you about today for the first
30 years of my life I was game for
everything and I felt a tremendous
enthusiasm for living I threw myself
into foreign languages like Japanese
into foreign travel and sport and then
for one grim period in my 30s I lost my
enthusiasm I spent my time engaged in
what I thought I should love doing
rather than what I truly loved I was
wasting my passions multi inai as the
Japanese say what a waste it was only
when I was utterly miserable in a job I
wasn’t any good at in a job that I
didn’t like it all that I finally went
back to committing myself to what I was
passionate about I’m here to share with
you today how I made the most important
decision of my life
a decision to embrace art and release
myself from the clutches of the law as a
child I dabbled in art encouraged to do
so by my mother but my first passionate
interest was the Japanese language and
from the age of 12 ice began to study
Japanese in my neighborhood alongside my
interest in Japanese arose a commitment
to long-distance running in high school
I ran over a hundred miles a week and in
college and graduate school running
continued to rule my life art was
nowhere on my radar when I graduated I
thought briefly about going to law
school like so many of my peers had done
but I found a job prospectus for a much
more interesting possibility foreign
liaison representative for a patent and
law office in Seoul Korea now Korea
today is a high-tech modern democracy
but back then it was a repressive
military dictatorship far behind Japan
in terms of its economic development
there were plainclothes policemen on the
street and foreign trade was restricted
you couldn’t buy a banana on the open
market but as it turned out Korea was a
great place for an oddball interesting
studying Asian languages someone like me
and every day after work
I studied the language and I went
everywhere and so exploring its hidden
corners and speaking Korean to everyone
I met I also spent a lot of time running
now Seoul is an urban jungle but in the
center of town there’s a tree covered
hill accessed by a steep two-mile road
and I ran up and down that road every
day four times a day for two years as
long as I was in Seoul I felt insulated
from the pressures of adulthood none of
the pressures affecting my peers in the
states affected me but when I came back
to the States
I felt the kind of culture shock and I
decided it was time to take life
seriously taking like serious to me at
the time meant going to law school I
wasn’t particularly interested in law
but I thought here was a field in which
I could use my Japanese language skills
so I applied to law schools and with
luck and good timing on my side I got
into Harvard
now Harvard being Harvard I thought and
I should really focus on my studies but
before I did I thought I’d run one last
race and I flew to Eugene Oregon to run
a marathon I ran the marathon in a time
of two hours 13 minutes and 59 seconds a
time fast enough by one second to
receive an all-expenses-paid invitation
to run in the 1982 new york marathon as
one of the 72 so-called elite runners
well I was thrilled and I skipped my
first classes at Harvard and I flew to
New York to run the race I started the
race at the rock bottom of that pile of
72 so-called elite runners in a field of
16,000 I finished the race in third
well third place needless to say was
beyond my wildest dreams and the
excitement of finishing third was
increased by the fact that the result
was so unexpected as a commentator for
ABC News said live on air during the
race if anyone thinks they know who
dance lesson jure is they should think
again third place and suddenly
qualification for the US Olympic team
seemed a realistic possibility running
was back on the agenda and I returned to
Harvard with a new resolution I was
gonna train as well as study
unfortunately this wasn’t a resolution
that anyone else was making at Harvard
Law School and as I sat there in a sea
of 150 students waiting for the
professor to : on one of us the woman to
my right responded to the professor with
the intensity with the interest level of
a religious disciple I on the other hand
couldn’t have cared less I was already
thinking about my afternoon workout and
of this charming law student I just met
house in weather field whom I later
married but with three years with three
years of Law School school to go I knew
I was in the wrong place I didn’t like
what I was doing and I wasn’t any good
at it
but still I stuck with it persuading
myself that I could use my law degree
for something other than working at a
big-city law firm and then with a
remarkable lack of imagination I applied
for work at a big-city law firm what I
was about to do was thrust myself into
an environment that would snuff out my
passionate interests in running in
Japanese and family life and I was
completely distressed by it but I went
ahead and did it
I suppose my employers thought that
employers who gave me a job at a
big-city law firm thought that
discipline is a runner training for the
US Olympic Trials would translate
somehow into high performance as a
lawyer
in fact discipline is a runner training
for the US Olympic Trials translated to
no such thing
discipline as a runner was just that
discipline as a runner and nothing else
everyday at the law firm as long as I
was working at the law firm I woke up
with the Olympics on my mind before
starting work I went to Central Park ran
six miles around the around the park
before returning to the office to do a
bit of work before returning to the park
to do an afternoon workout leaving my
unfinished work for my colleagues to do
now this didn’t go down terribly well
with my colleagues nor with my employers
but still I kept at it training and
training and getting into the best shape
of my life until just two weeks before
the US Olympic Trials I injured myself
and I couldn’t contest replace I was
crushed by this disappointment and that
discipline was compounded by the fact
that I was losing my focus on running a
focus which had long distracted me from
my unfulfilled and unsuccessful life as
a lawyer there were no excuses there was
no ambiguity I was failing at my
profession a profession in which I felt
not the slightest passion or interest I
was 35 an agent winch which all my
classmates at Harvard were succeeding at
their careers and I was nowhere
professionally I felt a failure and that
failure pervaded all aspects of my life
but my legal career with its downward
trajectory
still hadn’t run its course and I
accepted an offer to work at a law firm
in Japan
unfortunately my transfer coincided with
the bursting of the Japanese economic
bubble and there was no legal work to do
I was completely idle my office came to
a depressing standstill I wandered
around Tokyo aimlessly drowning my
sorrows and bowls of ramen and sulking
and there in the middle of Tokyo
amidst the bars amidst the pachinko
parlors amidst the banks and department
stores I came across a workshop where
Japanese artisans were making woodblock
prints using traditional tools and
blocks of cherry wood I was thrilled I’d
always been fascinated by Japanese
woodblock prints by the traditional
images of the courtesans of kabuki
actors of the Great Wave and of Mount
Fuji and I persuaded the artisans to
teach me how to make woodblock prints
every day I went there to explore my
passion conceiving designs that had as
their subject matter my family I
produced print after print and with the
production of every print my spirits
rose this was a great omen for the
future in 1990 with Japan and me still
in a rut I moved to London where Allison
was from I was still working as a lawyer
still making woodblock prints in my
spare time but I couldn’t find a way
from law to art I tried selling my
prints
but woodblock prints weren’t
remunerative I thought about what else I
could do
I thought about starting a business
where I would teach Japanese expatriates
how to negotiate life in London but what
eventually rescued me from my situation
was not some grandiose business plan it
was something as simple as the stuff I
drew with what transform my life was
finding the right artistic medium now it
had to be a choice between watercolours
and pastels because without a studio
space dedicated to painting I couldn’t
do all I’m painting watercolors were
wishy-washy but pastels were vivid and
unlike my woodblock prints my pastels
sold I suppose it was because of all the
color I used I used color lavishly I
still do or perhaps it was the
accessibility of my subject matter not
my family life but London it sparks with
and it’s architecture st. Pauls and the
River Thames this was a fantastic
fantastic awakening for me I drew and
drew and sold and sold and before long I
was making enough money as an artist to
leave the practice of law forever when I
finally found my way from law to art
suddenly opportunities so scarce
opportunities I couldn’t have imagined
were suddenly on my doorstep it was at
this time in the summer of 1995 that I
received a visit from a Japanese friend
of mine that dramatically changed my
life I had met Yuka Matsuoka on a plane
from Tokyo to London in the 70s she was
a simultaneous interpreter married to
the owner of saison sha a small Japanese
Japanese publishing house with a
reputation for releasing worthy titles
that didn’t sell now all these later
Yuko was visiting me in London her
husband had died and she had inherited
the publishing house she was looking for
a book to publish now just at this time
my nine-year-old Sonya Noah had read an
English book of fantasy that appealed to
children and adults alike I read the
book from cover to cover I loved it and
I referred it to Yuko suggesting that
she contact the author about getting the
rights to publish the book in Japan Yuko
approached the author a hitherto unknown
writer by the name of JK Rowling the
book was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s
JK Rowling was impressed by the fact
that Yuko was a female entrepreneur and
she gave her the rights to publish the
book in Japan Yuko was impressed by my
work in pastels and asked me to become
the cover designer for Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer’s Stone
she asked me eventually to design covers
for the whole series here a few of
examples of the covers she also asked me
to illustrate the book in the form of
line drawings
you go and I couldn’t have imagined what
would happen after all JK Rowling was a
hitherto unknown writer whose name was
anything but a household name and she’d
only published one book I was an
inexperienced illustrator in fact I’d
never done an illustration for as much
as a single book but by the end of the
project seven book covers and 199
illustrations later I was anything but
Harry Potter became a runaway bestseller
in Japan and that popularity induced to
Japanese entrepreneur to approach me
with an idea if I would give him 50 oil
paintings in three months he would do a
show of my work and pay me $50,000 well
this was an offer I couldn’t possibly
refuse but the trouble was I didn’t have
a single oil painting in my inventory
the reason being I’d never painted one
this led to one of the greatest artistic
opportunities of my life under normal
circumstances it would have taken me
years to learn to work with oils but
with the Commission to do 50 oil
paintings in three months I had to lose
used learn to use oils quickly I
conducted what amounted to 50
experiments in oil painting using the
skills I developed as an artist working
in pastel skills in color and design
this self-taught crash course in oil
painting gave me the skills I used to
make a living for the rest of my life
and I used those skills
to travel the muggle world I was invited
to Japan to give exhibitions and talk
shows and I went around the world at my
leisure seeking inspiration for my art
to London to Venice to Florence to
through forests mountains and oceans
I even revisited Hogwarts in a series of
signs of the zodiac my Gemini twins are
wizards and my Libra is a goblin from
Gringotts Bank measuring the moon and
stars I even got to the Olympics through
my art and now here I am in New York
City this is not to say that being an
artist is without its disappointments
I’ve had shows at which people vied for
my work in a state of art rage but I’ve
also had shows at which I didn’t sell a
thing but the important thing is that of
an artist and I love what I do it often
occurs to me that it took me a long time
to become an artist and I wonder if I
should have started down that road
sooner but then I think about all the
benefits of the things I did along the
way and how they actually paved my way
to becoming an artist
speaking Japanese fostered my
relationship with Yuka Matsuoka who
became the publisher of Harry Potter in
Japan being a long-distance runner
opened my eyes to the possibility of
doing something other than law as a
career and working as a lawyer in Japan
gave me access to that workshop where I
started down the path to being an artist
the opportunities I had were unique to
me but the resources I use to pursue
those opportunities were not unique when
I speak about resources I’m not talking
about networking and connections I’m
talking about inner resources
persevering being open to change and
being curious I hope that all of you
have found something you love to do with
your lives or you’re on the road to
finding something you love to do with
your lives I hope that all of you have
had mentors or teachers who have said
it’s alright to explore with uncertainty
it’s alright to say yes to something
when you’re not sure what the
consequences will be and it’s alright to
take risks that are unplanned it’s not
going to be easy the pressure to
maximize economic security may prove
irresistible leaving you dissatisfied
but if you remember one thing from my
talk today remember this it’s okay to be
dissatisfied but it’s not okay to have
dissatisfaction as your status quo
explore explore and explore again until
you find what sparks your passions
cultivate your interests early but
remember this it’s never too late to
start thank you [Applause]
I’m not here to tell you all about how
great it is to be an artist or how you
should all make art your career in fact
paying less attention to what others say
you should or shouldn’t do and more
attention to what interests you and what
you’re capable of doing is what I’m here
to talk to you about today for the first
30 years of my life I was game for
everything and I felt a tremendous
enthusiasm for living I threw myself
into foreign languages like Japanese
into foreign travel and sport and then
for one grim period in my 30s I lost my
enthusiasm I spent my time engaged in
what I thought I should love doing
rather than what I truly loved I was
wasting my passions multi inai as the
Japanese say what a waste it was only
when I was utterly miserable in a job I
wasn’t any good at in a job that I
didn’t like it all that I finally went
back to committing myself to what I was
passionate about I’m here to share with
you today how I made the most important
decision of my life
a decision to embrace art and release
myself from the clutches of the law as a
child I dabbled in art encouraged to do
so by my mother but my first passionate
interest was the Japanese language and
from the age of 12 ice began to study
Japanese in my neighborhood alongside my
interest in Japanese arose a commitment
to long-distance running in high school
I ran over a hundred miles a week and in
college and graduate school running
continued to rule my life art was
nowhere on my radar when I graduated I
thought briefly about going to law
school like so many of my peers had done
but I found a job prospectus for a much
more interesting possibility foreign
liaison representative for a patent and
law office in Seoul Korea now Korea
today is a high-tech modern democracy
but back then it was a repressive
military dictatorship far behind Japan
in terms of its economic development
there were plainclothes policemen on the
street and foreign trade was restricted
you couldn’t buy a banana on the open
market but as it turned out Korea was a
great place for an oddball interesting
studying Asian languages someone like me
and every day after work
I studied the language and I went
everywhere and so exploring its hidden
corners and speaking Korean to everyone
I met I also spent a lot of time running
now Seoul is an urban jungle but in the
center of town there’s a tree covered
hill accessed by a steep two-mile road
and I ran up and down that road every
day four times a day for two years as
long as I was in Seoul I felt insulated
from the pressures of adulthood none of
the pressures affecting my peers in the
states affected me but when I came back
to the States
I felt the kind of culture shock and I
decided it was time to take life
seriously taking like serious to me at
the time meant going to law school I
wasn’t particularly interested in law
but I thought here was a field in which
I could use my Japanese language skills
so I applied to law schools and with
luck and good timing on my side I got
into Harvard
now Harvard being Harvard I thought and
I should really focus on my studies but
before I did I thought I’d run one last
race and I flew to Eugene Oregon to run
a marathon I ran the marathon in a time
of two hours 13 minutes and 59 seconds a
time fast enough by one second to
receive an all-expenses-paid invitation
to run in the 1982 new york marathon as
one of the 72 so-called elite runners
well I was thrilled and I skipped my
first classes at Harvard and I flew to
New York to run the race I started the
race at the rock bottom of that pile of
72 so-called elite runners in a field of
16,000 I finished the race in third
well third place needless to say was
beyond my wildest dreams and the
excitement of finishing third was
increased by the fact that the result
was so unexpected as a commentator for
ABC News said live on air during the
race if anyone thinks they know who
dance lesson jure is they should think
again third place and suddenly
qualification for the US Olympic team
seemed a realistic possibility running
was back on the agenda and I returned to
Harvard with a new resolution I was
gonna train as well as study
unfortunately this wasn’t a resolution
that anyone else was making at Harvard
Law School and as I sat there in a sea
of 150 students waiting for the
professor to : on one of us the woman to
my right responded to the professor with
the intensity with the interest level of
a religious disciple I on the other hand
couldn’t have cared less I was already
thinking about my afternoon workout and
of this charming law student I just met
house in weather field whom I later
married but with three years with three
years of Law School school to go I knew
I was in the wrong place I didn’t like
what I was doing and I wasn’t any good
at it
but still I stuck with it persuading
myself that I could use my law degree
for something other than working at a
big-city law firm and then with a
remarkable lack of imagination I applied
for work at a big-city law firm what I
was about to do was thrust myself into
an environment that would snuff out my
passionate interests in running in
Japanese and family life and I was
completely distressed by it but I went
ahead and did it
I suppose my employers thought that
employers who gave me a job at a
big-city law firm thought that
discipline is a runner training for the
US Olympic Trials would translate
somehow into high performance as a
lawyer
in fact discipline is a runner training
for the US Olympic Trials translated to
no such thing
discipline as a runner was just that
discipline as a runner and nothing else
everyday at the law firm as long as I
was working at the law firm I woke up
with the Olympics on my mind before
starting work I went to Central Park ran
six miles around the around the park
before returning to the office to do a
bit of work before returning to the park
to do an afternoon workout leaving my
unfinished work for my colleagues to do
now this didn’t go down terribly well
with my colleagues nor with my employers
but still I kept at it training and
training and getting into the best shape
of my life until just two weeks before
the US Olympic Trials I injured myself
and I couldn’t contest replace I was
crushed by this disappointment and that
discipline was compounded by the fact
that I was losing my focus on running a
focus which had long distracted me from
my unfulfilled and unsuccessful life as
a lawyer there were no excuses there was
no ambiguity I was failing at my
profession a profession in which I felt
not the slightest passion or interest I
was 35 an agent winch which all my
classmates at Harvard were succeeding at
their careers and I was nowhere
professionally I felt a failure and that
failure pervaded all aspects of my life
but my legal career with its downward
trajectory
still hadn’t run its course and I
accepted an offer to work at a law firm
in Japan
unfortunately my transfer coincided with
the bursting of the Japanese economic
bubble and there was no legal work to do
I was completely idle my office came to
a depressing standstill I wandered
around Tokyo aimlessly drowning my
sorrows and bowls of ramen and sulking
and there in the middle of Tokyo
amidst the bars amidst the pachinko
parlors amidst the banks and department
stores I came across a workshop where
Japanese artisans were making woodblock
prints using traditional tools and
blocks of cherry wood I was thrilled I’d
always been fascinated by Japanese
woodblock prints by the traditional
images of the courtesans of kabuki
actors of the Great Wave and of Mount
Fuji and I persuaded the artisans to
teach me how to make woodblock prints
every day I went there to explore my
passion conceiving designs that had as
their subject matter my family I
produced print after print and with the
production of every print my spirits
rose this was a great omen for the
future in 1990 with Japan and me still
in a rut I moved to London where Allison
was from I was still working as a lawyer
still making woodblock prints in my
spare time but I couldn’t find a way
from law to art I tried selling my
prints
but woodblock prints weren’t
remunerative I thought about what else I
could do
I thought about starting a business
where I would teach Japanese expatriates
how to negotiate life in London but what
eventually rescued me from my situation
was not some grandiose business plan it
was something as simple as the stuff I
drew with what transform my life was
finding the right artistic medium now it
had to be a choice between watercolours
and pastels because without a studio
space dedicated to painting I couldn’t
do all I’m painting watercolors were
wishy-washy but pastels were vivid and
unlike my woodblock prints my pastels
sold I suppose it was because of all the
color I used I used color lavishly I
still do or perhaps it was the
accessibility of my subject matter not
my family life but London it sparks with
and it’s architecture st. Pauls and the
River Thames this was a fantastic
fantastic awakening for me I drew and
drew and sold and sold and before long I
was making enough money as an artist to
leave the practice of law forever when I
finally found my way from law to art
suddenly opportunities so scarce
opportunities I couldn’t have imagined
were suddenly on my doorstep it was at
this time in the summer of 1995 that I
received a visit from a Japanese friend
of mine that dramatically changed my
life I had met Yuka Matsuoka on a plane
from Tokyo to London in the 70s she was
a simultaneous interpreter married to
the owner of saison sha a small Japanese
Japanese publishing house with a
reputation for releasing worthy titles
that didn’t sell now all these later
Yuko was visiting me in London her
husband had died and she had inherited
the publishing house she was looking for
a book to publish now just at this time
my nine-year-old Sonya Noah had read an
English book of fantasy that appealed to
children and adults alike I read the
book from cover to cover I loved it and
I referred it to Yuko suggesting that
she contact the author about getting the
rights to publish the book in Japan Yuko
approached the author a hitherto unknown
writer by the name of JK Rowling the
book was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s
JK Rowling was impressed by the fact
that Yuko was a female entrepreneur and
she gave her the rights to publish the
book in Japan Yuko was impressed by my
work in pastels and asked me to become
the cover designer for Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer’s Stone
she asked me eventually to design covers
for the whole series here a few of
examples of the covers she also asked me
to illustrate the book in the form of
line drawings
you go and I couldn’t have imagined what
would happen after all JK Rowling was a
hitherto unknown writer whose name was
anything but a household name and she’d
only published one book I was an
inexperienced illustrator in fact I’d
never done an illustration for as much
as a single book but by the end of the
project seven book covers and 199
illustrations later I was anything but
Harry Potter became a runaway bestseller
in Japan and that popularity induced to
Japanese entrepreneur to approach me
with an idea if I would give him 50 oil
paintings in three months he would do a
show of my work and pay me $50,000 well
this was an offer I couldn’t possibly
refuse but the trouble was I didn’t have
a single oil painting in my inventory
the reason being I’d never painted one
this led to one of the greatest artistic
opportunities of my life under normal
circumstances it would have taken me
years to learn to work with oils but
with the Commission to do 50 oil
paintings in three months I had to lose
used learn to use oils quickly I
conducted what amounted to 50
experiments in oil painting using the
skills I developed as an artist working
in pastel skills in color and design
this self-taught crash course in oil
painting gave me the skills I used to
make a living for the rest of my life
and I used those skills
to travel the muggle world I was invited
to Japan to give exhibitions and talk
shows and I went around the world at my
leisure seeking inspiration for my art
to London to Venice to Florence to
through forests mountains and oceans
I even revisited Hogwarts in a series of
signs of the zodiac my Gemini twins are
wizards and my Libra is a goblin from
Gringotts Bank measuring the moon and
stars I even got to the Olympics through
my art and now here I am in New York
City this is not to say that being an
artist is without its disappointments
I’ve had shows at which people vied for
my work in a state of art rage but I’ve
also had shows at which I didn’t sell a
thing but the important thing is that of
an artist and I love what I do it often
occurs to me that it took me a long time
to become an artist and I wonder if I
should have started down that road
sooner but then I think about all the
benefits of the things I did along the
way and how they actually paved my way
to becoming an artist
speaking Japanese fostered my
relationship with Yuka Matsuoka who
became the publisher of Harry Potter in
Japan being a long-distance runner
opened my eyes to the possibility of
doing something other than law as a
career and working as a lawyer in Japan
gave me access to that workshop where I
started down the path to being an artist
the opportunities I had were unique to
me but the resources I use to pursue
those opportunities were not unique when
I speak about resources I’m not talking
about networking and connections I’m
talking about inner resources
persevering being open to change and
being curious I hope that all of you
have found something you love to do with
your lives or you’re on the road to
finding something you love to do with
your lives I hope that all of you have
had mentors or teachers who have said
it’s alright to explore with uncertainty
it’s alright to say yes to something
when you’re not sure what the
consequences will be and it’s alright to
take risks that are unplanned it’s not
going to be easy the pressure to
maximize economic security may prove
irresistible leaving you dissatisfied
but if you remember one thing from my
talk today remember this it’s okay to be
dissatisfied but it’s not okay to have
dissatisfaction as your status quo
explore explore and explore again until
you find what sparks your passions
cultivate your interests early but
remember this it’s never too late to
start thank you [Applause]
Please follow and like us: