Being a "painter" is something to be.

Could I become a great painter?

I was a kid in Los Angeles when I first heard about “Painter” as a thing someone could be. I saw a feature on Jackson Pollock in a 1949 Life Magazine, “Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?”

I’m like, “So, ‘painter’ is something I could be when I grow up?”

Are these huge patterned paintings what is great? If I made paintings like this, would they be great?

With a cigarette hanging out his mouth, he looks like one of the fathers in my neighborhood but he has a rebellious amount of paint on his clothes.

I found that Jackson had gone to Manual Arts High School, same as my Dad.

By myself in our garage, I tried making a drip painting with some awful brown house paint on a flattened cardboard box. Right away I could see that for me to paint this way would require lots of paint, good colors and a larger surface. My mother was furious when she saw spilled paint on the floor, I had to scrub it up.

For me, painting like Jackson would have to come later.