I am currently applying for a creative writing fellowship from The CINTAS Foundation
This is a DRAFT of the Artist Statement I will submit:
The main body of my work for the past 50 years has been poetry, used
to express strong emotional feelings of sadness, loneliness,
desperation, morphing into recovery, self-awareness, healing and joy
as my life progressed from growing up with alcoholic parents, through
deliquency, to a successful career and the gift of a wonderful
supportive family. Through poetry, short stories, children’s books
and a novel in progress I hope to inspire others to look beyond
themselves and their personal life challenges and see the world as a
place where they can make a difference and a contribution. Raising
the consciousness and conscience of my readers to embrace integrity
and love while rejecting hate and racism is a goal that sometimes
appears as elusive as a windmill yet no less worthy to pursue.
My
work has ranged from and been inspired by the fears and hopes of
childhood, through traveling as a search for meaning, imprisonment as
a delinquent, the humiliation of social rejection, debilitating
injuries, to serving others through charitable organizations and
venturing deeply into my family’s past and exposing their secrets
as a healing process.
My
current project “Marguerite and The Cuban Paintings” is a
fictionalized non-fiction story that tracks a small collection of
historic and valuable paintings from the 17th and 18th
centuries through
Europe,
Spain, Cuba, and the United States focusing on the people closest to
the collection and how it affects them, changes them, inspires them,
and in some cases destroys them. The painting’s are real and I
have seen them after they had been hidden in my grandfather’s
basement for 50 years and then gradually destroyed over the next 20
years. The family charged with their safe-keeping is my own, on my
mothers side; a Cuban diplomat exiled with his family to America.
The mute, haunting journey of the paintings tormented the conscience
of my Cuban-American family hiding the guilt and shame of smuggling
or theft and ultimately killing most of them.
I
have chosen a path of discovery, learning, determination and
integrity led by a fictitious young women who learns more about
herself and her true identity than she does about the paintings. She
is determined to find and return them to their rightful owners or
their families, thus mirroring a journey that she wishes to
experience.
The
ultimate goal and purpose of my past and current writing is to leave
a documented legacy of my own life’s journey for my family to use
as they grow and then question their own identities and the source of
their emotions and inspirations. This goal is one that I have had,
through my writings, the pleasure of sharing with others; friends,
family, and often people who I have never met. Their feedback and
reactions are usually positive but always surprise me and validate my
decision to write.
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