This is what I dreamt. I didn’t dream so...

This is what I dreamt. I didn’t dream so much as realize this. I felt so close to the paintings. I wasn’t just selling them like pieces of meat. I remembered why I loved paintings in the first place-- what had got me into this-- and I thought-- dreamed-- remembered-- how easy it is for a painter to lose a painting. He can paint and paint-- work on a canvas for months and one day he loses it-- just loses the structure--loses the sense of it-- you lose the painting.

When the kids were little, we went to a parents’ meeting at their school and I asked the teacher why all her students were geniuses in the second grade? Look at the first grade. Blotches of green and black. Look at the third grade. Camouflage. But the second grade-- your grade. Matisses everywhere. You’ve made my child a Matisse. Let me study with you. Let me into second grade! What is your secret? And this is what she said: “Secret? I don’t have any secret. I just know when to take their drawings away from them.”

Guare, John, Six Degrees of Separation, Vintage Books, 1994, pp 45-46.