David Ogilvy and Grandma Moses: Twists & Turns of life and following your passion:
Life takes twists and turns. If you flow with life rather than resisting it and follow your passion when opportunity come, life becomes better.
David Ogilvy is a legend in advertising. The life of David Ogilvy is an inspiration to many. He was an advertising tycoon, founder of Ogilvy & Mather, and known as the “Father of Advertising”.
He was expelled from Oxford, slaved in hotel kitchen in Paris, sold stoves in Scotland, and farmed in Pennsylvania, among many other apparently random occupations that consumed the first 17 years of his career.
This legend of advertising started at the age of 37, can you believe it. Ogilvy had a very humble beginning; in the 1900s his family could not afford college tuition, so he attended Christ Church in Oxford on a scholarship, but he dropped out before graduating. He took up the job of a chef in a hotel but was not happy with it, so he gave that up and became a salesman for Aga stoves. He tasted a lot of success being a salesman; in fact, he was so good at it that he ended up writing a guide for other Aga salesmen. Fortune later called it “probably the best sales manual ever written.” But this also did not make him happy, so he moved on.
Ogilvy moved to America and worked for a research institute where he developed a deep dedication to research. He also applied this love for researching people’s behaviour in World War II, where he served with the Intelligence Service at the British Embassy in Washington.
Then later at the age of 37, he founded an ad agency in New York. We would think it is out of nowhere, but I would like to believe that he had figured out his hearts calling by that time. Because despite being the best salesman and doing so good at research, he was not happy, he was looking for something more that would satisfy his heart. And he figured it was advertising. He was so convinced by it that he began his agency before he had ever even written an ad.
It is slightly difficult to imagine David Ogilvy who is considered as the “father of advertising” and a creative genius by many, was a middle-aged man starting from scratch in advertising, with no college degree.
We all have some passion in our life, and we seek ways to live that passion, but we keep blaming the circumstances and keep delaying our true calling of life. All of us keep daydreaming about it and wish it could become a reality. We also have the amazing habit of blaming our age for not doing things that we love. Wonder what is a good age to do things that we like.
You are never too old to start doing what you love.
Anna Mary Robertson known as Grandma Moses
Born Anna Mary Robertson, the artist left home at a young age to work as a hired girl at a neighboring farm. Marrying in 1887, she eventually gave birth to 10 children (5 of whom survived past infancy). In addition to her work as a farm wife and mother, Moses helped support her family by selling various homemade foods.
She spent decades doing embroidery. Moses disliked spending time knitting and sewing, but she began entertaining herself and her friends by making needlework pictures and quilts portraying colorful scenes of farm life. At 78, when arthritis rendered her unable to embroider, friends suggested she try painting these scenes instead.
Moses worked with whatever materials were at hand, used house paint and leftover canvas or fireboard for her first paintings. As a self-taught artist, Moses had little concern for perspective or proportion.
Although familiar with the hardships and sorrow of farm life, she illustrated happy childhood memories of fields and storms, barn dances, and holidays in rural New York and Virginia. She deliberately omitted telephone poles, tractors, and other elements of the effects of industrialization.
New York collector Louis J. Caldor chanced upon Moses’s work and helped her begin exhibiting professionally. She gained the nickname “Grandma Moses” from a reviewer at New York’s Herald Tribune. Her paintings became immensely popular and were appreciated for their nostalgic charm.
She exhibited her work internationally into her 90s and painted until a few months before her death at age 101.
Her story is also an example of twists and turns of life. Life happens when you are doing other things. Life happens when you are alive to your passion and can see and seize opportunities.
Sources:
Anna Mary Robertson https://nmwa.org/art/artists/grandma-moses-anna-mary-robertson-moses/
Site Title: The Unlimited Human Potential 