On the right decision

I have never been too sure how I feel about Gaugain. I very much like his use of bold, flat colour and dark contours but I always feel slightly uneasy when looking at his work. I cannot say why I feel this, just that I do. Perhaps it is the yellow. He is on my mind as a new exhibition of his work has just opened at the National Gallery in London. I must confess, though, that I owe him a debt of gratitude for without him, I might not have left the safety of my life in medical publishing and braved the unknown world of art. Madonna too.

Having surprised my boss, my friends, my husband and mostly myself by deciding to take voluntary redundancy to go and study art history, I duly found myself interviewing for a place on the History of Modern and Contemporary Art postgraduate diploma course at Christie’s. I had no idea what to expect. Or what was expected; I had little or no background in art history. We chatted a while. And then a postcard was produced. I was asked if I recognised the artwork depicted. It was a sculpture in wood. I did not but said that it reminded me of Gaugain. By Gaugain it was. Amazingly. Until that moment I was woefully, embarrassingly, ignorant of his sculpture. We chatted a while about his work. And then other postcards were produced. We chatted a while more. Eventually the interviewers asked me to place the postcards in chronological order, from the oldest artwork to the most recent. Oh dear. I recognised the Gaugain sculpture, now, and that was it. A deal of head scratching later, I was done. The interviewers looked at the arrangement. I looked at the arrangement. They asked why I had placed them in that order. I had reasons, reasons to do with when I thought that neon light had become popular or that one photograph reminded me of Madonna in her Desperately Seeking Susan incarnation. Reasons that to my mind had absolutely nothing to do with the art. I waffled on. They nodded and smiled. It seemed that I had got the order spot on. We chatted a while more. And then they ended by offering me a place on the course. I was surprised, delighted and a little taken aback. Was that it? It seemed almost too easy.

I deferred my place for a year, ostensibly to sort out all the redundancy issues. Going back to full time education as a mature student is not without its challenges. Truthfully though, I am a champion, gold medal winning procrastinator. I’m not good with change so I need plenty of time to get used to the idea of something new, and the idea of giving up a career and starting over certainly needed a lot of getting used to. Once on the course, I discovered that almost if not all of the other students had some background in art history. I had none and so felt completely out of my depth almost all the time. The only points in my favour were that I had lived a good bit longer than most of them and that I am unknowingly an avid collector of seemingly useless bits of information.

Not so useless after all. About three months in, in conversation over coffee one day we got to talking about the interviewing process. As I sat listening, I discovered I was unusual in placing the postcards in the correct order and in being offered a place at interview. Now, for the first time, I no longer felt like an imposter. I knew that I belonged there. Now I could get out of my own way and really enjoy it. All the fears about whether it was the right decision to abandon my career in publishing and start over fell away. Now all I had to worry about was the exams. And getting a job once I’d finished… and on it goes.

The right decision? Is there such a thing? We get so caught up in making the right decision that very often we make no decision at all. Which is, of course, a decision. A decision to stay as you are, and not face uncertainty or your fears or perhaps the criticism of your nearest and dearest. It’s not easy. Dear me, no. Despite the worrying and the toing and froing, my only regret is that I didn’t have the courage to take the leap sooner. Then I could have spent more of my life doing what I love. As Gary Vaynerchuk so eloquently says, “f*cking flip a coin, pick the one and never look back.”

I now have another big decision to make. The coin is in my pocket. One day very soon, I’ll flip it.