Long before I learned about writing and editing, and learned how to teach writing, I was an art student at the University of New Mexico.  In Art Studio we learned how to draw nudes, a bicycle with copious folds of cloth draped over the seat, bowls of fruit, and the ubiquitous brown adobe buildings that are indigenous to the desolate New Mexican landscape, along with cactus and vistas stretching for endless miles.  We mixed colors and painted verdant landscapes from pictures cut out from magazines published in faraway places we thought we’d never see, like New York City.

Two hippies, with graying hair tied back in ponytails, taught the class while rock and roll played on the radio; they created art as environments and we walked into their pieces and experienced art as Being.  We took existentialist art outside with an abundance of twine, instructed to create art in campus trees and lampposts and sewage grates and the rare tree, where we tied up virtually everything in the name of art.  I created my version of the Ojos de Dios (eyes of God), but as an expression of the embodiment of the human eye, and Seeing and Knowing, in the here and now of human existence, which was suspended between two trees.

Art History class remains a fuzzy memory of picture-filled textbooks, and a dim, cavernous classroom, populated with too many students, where paintings of the Masters were explained to us in slides projected on a screen.  I didn’t get Monet, Manet, Seurat, Renoir, Degas, Gauguin, Rembrandt, the Hudson River Valley school of painters, or even New Mexico’s own Georgia O’Keefe, and certainly not Picasso, until decades later when I lived near Washington, D.C. and visited the Smithsonian museums and the Corcoran, and still later, when I traveled to the Mecca of creative civilization —New York City— and visited the Museum of Modern Art, where more of the actual paintings lived.  The scale and depth of expression, of seeing one Monet painting, in person, was enough to change my perspective forever.  Ahhh!  I understood.

My desire to create visual art lasted from childhood into my late teens, when parents impressed me with the harsh reality that creative endeavors weren’t practical and I should think about getting a job in just anything at all.  Their parenting job was done.  Did I expect them to support me much longer?  My spirit drowned in confusion.  If I wasn’t a creative being, then who was I, and where did I belong?

At seventeen, I left home, and my first writing classes in school, and dropped the compass of reason to jump into careers I was no more suited for by temperament, or inclination, than a fish to go skydiving.  I found that I was competent in many things, but unhappy.  At 29 I left Albuquerque for San Diego, in search of greater opportunity and expressive freedom.

A casting director in San Diego prepared me to be an extra in a movie while fingering the clothes I was told to bring that would serve as costume.  He saw me, not as a person, but as a stereotype, and told me that the silk suit would be fine for the restaurant scene, but I was definitely not bag lady material.  I received this news with mixed feelings.  My great desire during that period was to make it in show business, and I felt I had range as an actress.  He had, in effect, just told me to “get real.”  But the experience was fun, so I continued exploring.

My nascent creative being was frustrated with so many rivers to choose from, and no guidance, encouragement, or clear idea of which water source to visit to fill my cup of hopes and dreams.  And so I swam upstream, fighting the currents of first this creative energy, then that, struggling on aimless parched paths for years, until I discovered a stream leading to an ocean of passion where I could splash and play for the rest of my life.

Embarking on a return tour of college, in search of meaning and an A.A. degree in English, I discovered islands of literature, performance for theatre and television, production for theatre, voice, and I helped produce a television talk show.

A cacophonous chorus of show biz fairies danced in my head nearly drowning out the more important voices of literature and writing.  Then, I had only begun reading world literature, and I didn’t think of literature as the foundation for interesting stories in theatre and film.  But several things happened to nudge me toward awareness, to reawaken a childhood wish to write books —and to do something about it.

Expressive arts nurture the soul and the need for creative expression, so jazz dance made me want to move more fluidly, acting made me think about the meanings behind the characters and their words and actions —and their motivations— in new ways.  No movement or intention is wasted in theatre; every prop, costume, blocked action, and character has a purpose.  Good fiction should be written this way.

Television performance classes taught me the importance of the phrasing of the reporter’s question and how to interview people, long before I became a reporter or learned the difference between nonfiction and creative nonfiction.  My acting instructor said, “You are the instrument,” and I learned The Method (how to put my experiences and feelings into the character and scene to produce the right emotion for that scene, that character, in that circumstance).  The languages of performing arts and literature are interconnected and I discovered how to be a better writer, in part, through acting.

The fear of public speaking stands on the same cliff, holding hands with the fear of death, before the great leap, but if you can sing in front of an audience, you can do anything.  The patience of my voice teacher was legendary.  Somehow, he sifted through the flotsam of my misconceptions about singing (built upon a stack of 1970s pop music record albums) and trained my musical instrument, and I had the courage to sing a solo on stage in a musical.

I played Mary Sunshine, the one part they cut out in the movie production of Chicago.  I had several quick costume changes, and I didn’t have time to change in the dressing room, so I changed just off stage.  Not willing to be scantily clad in the Main Street traffic of stagehands and fellow actors, I wore aerobics exercise clothes in lieu of lingerie, and wore my costumes over that.  We had a live band whose members were old enough to be my father, and one evening while I was in mid-costume change, a horn player wandered backstage to my area.  Flustered by my state of undress, he stammered, “I’m so sorry.”  I thought he was going to drop his horn.  He didn't wander that way again for the run of the musical.

It was by studying voice that I truly began to hear the music of words through practice, and have enriched my creative writing with that knowledge.

In Northern Virginia I returned to school to study interior design and learned about architectural design, the fundamentals of interior design practice, fabrics, and the history of furniture.  That was where I learned to furnish my stories with detail.

Our class took a field trip to New York City, stopping enroute in York, Pennsylvania, where we visited a custom carpet factory, fabric manufacturers, and a wallpaper manufacturer.  These were environments of art, where jacquard weave produced a wealth of texture and color in fabrics, and painters designed wallpaper portraits and landscapes that were fed into computers.  I watched workers put the right amount of the right colors of paint into the machines that printed the wallpapers; the machines rolled out the papers, new and wet, like newsprint to be read.

At the Frick Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan we entered complete rooms designed by architectural and interior design masters like Frank Lloyd Wright, William Morris, and Robert Adams.  They created environments of art, wealth, and comfort that I wanted to move into.  The city was like nothing I had known, with a quick pace that got me where I was going, almost before I knew I wanted to be there.  The photographs I had seen of the city were only hints of the real place, towering and gloomy in gray December.

In Washington, D.C. I saw the Arena Stage production of Sunday In The Park With George, about the life of the pointillist painter Georges Seurat.  The actor who played Seurat painted a large canvas, accompanied by staccato music that complemented his painting style.  At the end of the musical a stage-sized transparent mesh screen represented his canvas.  The spotlights illuminated costumed characters behind the screen posed as they were in the real painting, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and the effect was like the pinpoint precision of brush strokes in the pointillist style.

Art imitates life.  Life creates art.  Theatre is the artistic environment we enter every time we see a play or musical.

In the beginning, before our natural inclinations are all but erased by parental commands saying, “This is for your own good,” the practicalities of growing up imprison freedom, and we are assaulted by lessons teaching us to not listen to our own inner wisdom.  And, for goodness sake, don't be creative.  It isn't practical.

In childhood we play with toys of spontaneous inspiration and do things with joy just because they make us happy.  This is our true self, where time passes freely, and we are doing the important work of learning who we are, what talents should be knitted into skills and shared with the world.  All too often, that exploration is unraveled early by the good intentions or jealousy of others, so that finding the spiritual breadcrumbs that will lead us back to passion is almost impossible.

I returned to school, yet again, with the mission to learn how to write well.  I earned a B.A. in English with a track in writing, graduating with honors from George Mason University, where I studied writing fiction, nonfiction, creative nonfiction, and screenplays.  I attended the Graduate School of Education at the University of Virginia, Northern Virginia Center, and then taught English, Writing, and Theatre Arts in public schools.  I was a reporter and wrote feature articles and press releases for The Asia Times of D.C., and later for The Herald in Connecticut.  I’ve written a novel and a cookbook.

I’m passionate about movies and literature, and especially, the translation between an exceptional novel and a great film.  When I watch a movie, I’m seeing the whole production, all the little things that  make it whole, and I’m listening to the screenplay as I watch, tasting the words and feeling the meanings.

The existentialist philosopher René Descartes explained proof of existence with the phrase “cogito ergo sum.”  (I think, therefore I am.)  I say, “I write, therefore I am.”  There is no better way to paint pictures and express joy.

I write, offer writing services, lead writing workshops, teach writing one-on-one, and do public speaking.  Please call me if you would like me to write a press release or feature story for you, lead a writing workshop, give a presentation for your organization, or coach you in writing.

Tricia Stuart
860-612-0041