Teaching us to live!

Tom Anderson, Alexander Master Artist, posed this question to us the other day. What if there had been no Bill Alexander? It’s kind of interesting when you think about it, isn’t it? Bill Alexander was, perhaps, one of the most important people in art in the last one hundred years. Don’t you think he deserves a little recognition for his contribution?

Early Life

Bill was born into abject poverty in a part of Germany that saw some of the worst fighting of World War I. In his autobiography Bill tells stories of unexploded ordinance left in the fields where he lived. Preventative health services, we take for granted, were nonexistent and poor health services took his mother’s life. His family was so poor, he could have starved to death. Surviving childhood was a major accomplishment!

Wounded three times during World War II, Bill could have died forgotten in a German hospital. Worse, he could have died alone on the battlefield. Raised in an anti-war household Bill abhorred war and the destruction it wrought. What a nightmare it must have been to have had to fight, or die, for a ruthless regime.

The incident on the bridge with the Russian soldier could have taken his life in one brief moment of panic. Confronting Patton’s Third Army, at the very least, showed a lack of military intelligence. Yet, Bill was responsible for his men, until they deserted him.

How many people?

There was the incident in the hospital emergency room when, penniless, death stalked him. Only the kindness of a doctor saved his life.

How many people intervened to bring Bill to us? There was Audrey, who recognized Bill’s genius. She took him out of the department store and elevated him to the role of a true artist. She even helped bring his family to America.

There was the woman who gave Bill the money he needed to get through the national park and then home. There were countless people, who passed through Bill’s life, that brought him to us.

Give up?

How easy it would have been to “give up” his desire for a career in art. Bill and Margarete never had much money – the measure of success today. Bill’s first wife harangued him to “get a job,” when it seemed he couldn’t provide for them.

Bill sacrificed much. Powers beyond his control seemed to direct him along a path that few of us would be willing, even able, to follow. It took Bill sixty years to meet with the success that would make him, at the time, a household word.

So…what if?

So, let’s go back to Tom’s question, “What if there had been no Bill Alexander?” There would have been no television show. There would have been no Emmy award. There would have been no millions of Americans introduced to the joy of creating art.

Bill brought art to millions of people. In the 1970’s, the world was still recovering from a slaughter that cost 60,000,000 lives. (That’s a difficult number to comprehend, isn’t it?) In the aftermath, rebuilding the world left little time to consider a pastime like art.

Bill survived these experiences and through them found meaning and purpose in life. He learned that, regardless of the circumstances, there is always a “better tomorrow”. If anyone had a good excuse for choosing the “dark side”, it was Bill. Yet, he rejected it with every breath he took and urged us to reject it, too.

A “better tomorrow”

In his videos, Bill’s joy of life and his hope for a “better tomorrow” are evident. He exhorts us with every brush stroke to become “the almighty creator”, to be “next to God”. He tells us that inside each of us is a power greater than we can hope to understand. All we need to do is release it; give it a voice, and we can overcome any obstacle in our path.

Art was Bill’s way of releasing that power. He was showing us that nothing can stop creative power. No dictator, no autocrat, no despot can compete with creative power. Bill wasn’t only teaching us to paint, he was teaching us to LIVE!