The Unstoppables is a series about people whose ambition is undimmed by time. Below, Frederic Tuten explains, in his own words, what continues to motivate him.
I never had an ambition to be a painter, to be a writer. I had a yearning. It was a yearning for life, and I equated life with the life of an artist, a life of freedom, generosity, a life with other people who had the same interests in making beautiful things together. I thought that was everything in the world.
Part of my yearning was to leave the Bronx, where I lived, to come out of that dreary little world where everything shut down by nine o’clock and where there were no bookstores.
At 15, I dropped out of high school. My dream was to save enough money to live in Paris. I’d seen “An American in Paris,” with Gene Kelly. He falls in love with a young Frenchwoman, and I remember so vividly, so poignantly, how I felt watching them together. I thought, I want that. I want to meet a young woman like that, and we would become lovers. And that I would paint and that that would be my life.
I had a friend, John Resko — he was a writer, a painter and my neighbor — and he gave me Kafka novels and other books I’d never read. We’d take the subway and go to art galleries, to downtown Manhattan. The experience gave me a taste of another life.
I had told Resko: “When I try to write, I get anxious. I want to leave, to go down to the street for a cigarette.” He said to me: “I guess you haven’t realized yet, the adventure isn’t outside in the street. The adventure is at your desk.” That’s the place you discover new things.
The secret is not to be frightened, not to give in to PC thinking. I’ve learned some of that from the women I’ve loved. When I’m with a woman I care for, I feel most myself. Somehow that relationship settles my anxiety, my feeling of smallness. That relationship wants me to become generous, to become loving and tender, to be part of making beautiful things. If you’re lucky enough to have the right connection, the right person, you grow.
I’m writing a new novel. No one is challenging me to produce this work. There are no expectations.
I feel at this crazy time that I’m beginning again, with a wish to not repeat myself, to not repeat any formulas for fiction or painting. I write every day. The work could be terrible; it could be nothing. I could be fooling myself. The extraordinary thing is that I look forward to doing the work. I can’t wait to get down to it.
I wake up in the morning, have coffee and write. After that I go to my easel and paint. It’s a rhythm that keeps me feeling alive. It eliminates any notion of age. You’re not old, you’re not young, you’re in the moment.
A famous actress once asked me: “How are you so joyous at your age? All of us are so despairing. You talk like you’re a kid,” and I said, “I am a kid.”
Recent and upcoming projects: Works in progress include new fiction. A selection of abstract canvases was exhibited in September at Central Fine in Miami Beach. A show of paintings is scheduled at Harper’s gallery in East Hampton, N.Y., in April. A facsimile of “Possession,” the screenplay written by Mr. Tuten and Andrzej Zulawski, who directed the 1981 cult film, will be published this spring.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.