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.