Finding My 16-Year-Old Self (and Nearly Dying Along the Way)
For my 60th birthday, I gave myself a gift—first-class flights to Bali, four incredible locations, and a promise to embrace adventure. It was a journey of contrasts: spiritual discovery in the mountains, diving into the deep, lazy sunsets on the beaches of the west and south, and taxi rides that took hours but felt like lifetimes.
Bali, in all its beauty, was also a study in contradictions. Pristine resorts sat beside mountains of rubbish. Tourists sipped Coca-Cola while locals struggled for clean water. And then there was the coffee—specifically, the infamous “shit coffee,” which, yes, had been digested and excreted before being served in an overpriced cup. A metaphor for life? Perhaps.
Somewhere between the temples and the chaos, I made a decision: I would change my life. I just didn’t know that life had its own plans for me first.
On the flight home, I had a cough. Nothing unusual—I have asthma, after all. But three weeks later, I was in a hospital bed, a nebuliser strapped to my face, fighting off an unknown biological horror that had set up camp in my lungs. I came close to not making it, and in those hazy, oxygen-starved moments, I remembered my 16-year-old self—the boy who wanted to be a painter, who almost made it before love and the need for a job took over.
I remembered how happy I was with nothing but a sketchbook and a head full of ideas.
So, I made another decision—the kind you don’t unmake. I was going to find that 16-year-old boy and take him back to art school.
And that’s how I ended up here, at the Florence Academy of Art, relearning how to see. Sight-sizing, finding volume, developing my line vocabulary—all so I can create more stories, more images, more things for people to share and enjoy.
Because if there’s one thing I learned from nearly dying, it’s this: life’s too short not to make art.
Images of Bali
Tim Taylor 