The soul of a bureaucrat...Le Douanier (the customs officer)

I like Henri Rousseau's work: http://www.henrirousseau.org/. It isn't groundbreaking or technically brilliant or filled with clever post-modern, pop-cult, meta references...but I find it satisfying in much the same way that I do the works of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Rousseau, who had no training in the arts, served in the army and then worked for more than twenty years in the Paris Customs Office. Though his nickname in the arts community was "Le Douanier" (the Customs Officer), he never actually attained that lofty title in his workplace. He fell in love with painting and, at age 49, took early retirement from his position as tax collector to pursue art as his career.

Ridiculed by critics and many others in the arts community for his "naive" style, he never achieved renown during his life, and died in poverty. But he always had confidence in himself and in his work. Eventually, his paintings became accepted and even popular. Many of his numerous works were portraits and landscapes of areas near his home in Paris, but it was his paintings of jungles (such as "The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope (Le lion ayant faim se jette sur l'antilope)" ) that would become his most famous...despite the fact that he never left France, nor ever saw a jungle. Henri learned about the exotic animals and plants of distant lands through illustrated books, stories told by soldiers who had been stationed in foreign climes, and by visiting exhibits of taxidermied animals and glass houses filled with tropical plants in Paris.

[I don't have a problem with this. After all, there's a very good chance that Bruegel never had an entire passel of peasant wedding guests hold still while he captured them for posterity...or the opportunity to paint the Tower of Babel while on vacation. Nor do I think Bosch painted the myriad monsters, demons and angels (oh, and giraffe) from life. (Mind you, I'm not willing to lay any bets where Bosch is concerned - he was one hoopy frood). Just as I'm pretty sure J.K. Rowling never leaped up and down the shifting stairs of Hogwarts...though I (and just a few others) are plenty glad she wrote her imaginings about the place down to share 'em! ]

I find Henri's story - of giving up "security" to do something that he loved - to be an inspiration. A triumph of imagination over fear. Perhaps someday I'll find an avocation I love enough to make my vocation - and throw caution to the wind!

Or not. :)