When the time approached for me to leave secondary school the question arose naturally as to what I might do with the rest of my life. I had demonstrated some capability in art, usually sharing the first place in marks with a lad named Hayes. (I wonder what happened to him.) The idea occurred to me that I might go on to art college, and take up art in some form as a career. The school thought this was a bad idea. I have wondered since whether this might have had to do with the fact that university entrance boosted the prestige of the school whereas acceptance at art school didn’t. My father was equally emphatic. It would be far better if I went to university, and given my grades overall I would have little difficulty in finding a place. After all, I could always continue with my art as a hobby. So, university it was, and I ended up making a career as an academic.
Not surprisingly, I have wondered every now and then what might have happened had I dug in my heels and taken the art school route. Of course, it is nice to entertain the scenario in the imagination that (of course!) I could have developed further and faster in art than I have done, and by now I would be a famous painter. There is always that other possibility, which cannot easily be dismissed. The most likely employment for a graduate of art school is that one ends up as a teacher of art. The requirements of teaching would probably have left little time or energy for independent practice as an artist, and painting might well, in any case, have ended up as a mere hobby.
Perhaps I have had the best of all possible worlds. I was able to take early retirement from the university at the age of 58, after which it has been possible to throw myself into art. I am by no means a “famous painter”, but I do manage to keep up a reasonably regular programme of exhibitions …. and, of course, I do sell pictures every now and then. Would I really have enjoyed a more satisfying life had I followed my inclinations as a seventeen-year-old? Of course, I can never know, but every now and then I find myself asking what might have happened if ….