William Young Martin

“In fact, after his accident, Moki went on to be an accomplished painter. He fathered a beautiful young girl. He founded and continues to oversee the Super Frog Triathlon that is held every year in Coronado. It is easy to blame your lot in life on some outside force, to stop trying because you believe fate is against you. It is easy to think that where you were raised, how your parents treated you, or what school you went to is all that determines your future. Nothing could be further from the truth. The common people and the great men and women are all defined by how they deal with life’s unfairness: Helen Keller, Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawking, Malala Yousafzai, and”

“The young, in particular, were transfixed. Vanessa Bell found it difficult to overstate the impact of the show on her peers. ‘It is impossible, I think, that any other single exhibition can ever have had so much effect as did that on the rising generation,’ she recalled. Post-Impressionism may have been ‘primitive’ but it was also profoundly liberating, releasing British artists from the straitjacket of stale convention. Taking a sledgehammer to the shibboleths of the academies, it opened up a world of possibility for self-expression. ‘Freedom was given to be oneself,’ she said. The encouragement to see and feel without inhibition was ‘absolutely overwhelming’.18””