Brush With Destiny

How his third grade teacher changed his life… some 40 years later

- Ron Medley

From the outside, things looked okay. I had a nice apartment, good friends, a longstanding job as a lawyer with New York City’s Department of Finance. But inside I felt empty. Day after day, I tracked down corporate scofflaws, calling them up and confronting them about the thousands of dollars they owed the city. It was necessary work—somebody had to do it—but over the years, steeling myself, I found I had become so callous. Life was drained of its colors.

I used to drop in at a tavern in Greenwich Village after work and unload on a bartender there, Angelo. The place had these big paintings on the walls, brilliant acrylic portraits. One showed folks sitting around a card table playing bridge with all the details beautifully painted, even the cards. It was not what you’d expect to see in a bar— nothing generic about it—and one day I asked someone who the artist was. “Angelo,” he said.

I was flummoxed. Angelo, the bartender? In his free time, he created beauty with paints and a brush. He nurtured his artistic side. A side I had myself but had somehow let languish. How long had it been since I’d even tried to draw? What would Miss Wiener think?

Growing up, I was studious, quiet and curious. I wanted to see—really see—everything in the world outside our Brooklyn apartment. I was one of three kids, and I’d sit for hours at our kitchen table, copying pictures out of TV Guide or Life magazines. I remember studying Jackie Kennedy’s bouffant hair in a picture—the same way our teachers at school were starting to wear their hair. I wondered how it worked, so I copied it carefully, penciling each strand of hair in her bangs. Drawing was an incredible way of understanding things.