Embrace The List [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 25, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

The rain was a visitor that stayed too long. In the evening we walked to the lake shore to wave goodbye and to make sure it was really going this time.

Earlier, when the rains came, we built a channel of towels to guide the river in the basement toward the drain. It’s protocol. The towels were stationed in their basket, freshly washed after their last call of duty. The fans were also ready for quick deployment. I was amused at our automatic response to the downpour. No words needed to be exchanged. We knew what had to be done.

A raccoon pulled back the roofing material on the sunroom roof and ate the tar. At least I think it was tar. It did not look appetizing to me but I am not a raccoon or an expert on raccoon dietary choices. I admit that a tar snack surprised me so I’m adding it to the ever-growing list of things-I-do-not-know. I did, however, know the storm was coming so we clamped the loose sheeting back in place. We need a sunny day or two and a YouTube lesson to make a full temporary repair. Our quick fix mostly worked. Mostly.

We live in an old house. In a few years we will celebrate its 100th birthday. When I first moved in I thought I should try and make everything perfect. I’d never owned a house before. Kerri was patient with my efforts-at-impossibility and finally convinced me to relax. “There’s always a list,” she said.

It turns out that it’s a great life philosophy, too. Relax. There’s always a list. Do what you can do when you can do it. It doesn’t hurt to have the towels and the fans ready. And, a few clamps and a few boards. They just might keep the rain out of the sunroom or the raccoon at bay. And then, enjoy the rain. Above all, remember to expect a sunny day.

Nap With Dog-Dog & BabyCat, 36″x48″ mixed media

read Kerri’s blog about RAIN

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Close-In [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 18, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

I am not good at minutia. Too much detail makes my brain hurt and forces my synapses to stop all action. I experience it as static, fuzzy noise where thought should be. It’s why I nearly flunked physics in high school. It’s why writing grants – a necessary activity for freelance artists – was akin to a near-death experience. On the upside, I’ve developed an uncanny capacity to stare into space for freakishly long amounts of time. Synapse recovery on the inside, deer-in-the-headlights on the outside.

Kerri took me for a walk. I was staring into space and she has learned that movement expedites my return to the land of the living. I was updating software in an attempt to fix a bug in my computer system. It was akin to delicate brain surgery and I had to dive into the weeds to understand what to do. I was well on my way through the procedure when it happened: white noise where coherent thought once trod. “Let’s stroll,” she suggested. I managed a head nod. I may or may not have remembered my shoes.

I am learning to discern between minutia of information and the expansive beauty of the world close-in. In my life I have avoided taking a closer look, reveling in my view from “30,000 feet”. I claimed to be a global thinker, which was true, but was also self-protection against having to write yet another torturous grant or swimming through pages and pages of budget numbers. I am learning to see the universe in a peony petal. E.O. Wilson introduced me to the miracle of ants. Kerri teaches me to see close-in. “Lookit!” she says, her photo a raindrop on a leaf, the fibers of our fallen tree, tiny seeds bursting from a pod. The secret geometry revealed, the pattern in the chaos.

Often, looking close-in is just like gazing into the night sky, marveling at the infinite wonder of The Milky Way.

an experiment, 18″x24″, mixed media on canvas

or…flipped sister pieces: Full Moon and Eclipse (2 panels, 36″x24″) mixed media

read Kerri’s blogpost about CLOSE-IN

http://www.kerrianddavid.com

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Born Anew [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 11, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

A week ago they were buds about ready to burst. This week the petals are letting go. The lifespan of a peony blossom is short. I consider them the flower equivalent of the sand paintings made by Tibetan monks: upon completion of the painting, upon the fullness of the blossom, it is swept away. All things are temporary.

“The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.” ~ Alan Watts

One of the gifts of our democracy is its fluidity. It is mutable. It is a system that is built upon a foundational principle of continual change and renewal. It is alive, growing and adapting. The mechanism of renewal in democracy is the what we know as voting. The people vote for the change they desire. The people vote for the future they envision.

John Dewey wrote, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.” The people vote for change but their vote is only meaningful when they are well-informed, when know the truth of the change they are voting for. When the people’s vote is based on misinformation, gaslighting and lies, democracy is stillborn. The only purpose for the incessant lies, for misleading propaganda, is to prevent change. To prevent democracy. To assault education, to erase history, to restrict knowledge, to flood the zone with misinformation…is to make the people ignorant and gullible. It is to prevent democracy.

Autocracy requires permanence. Democracy requires changeability. We are a sand painting, made anew again and again by a diverse people who participate in the perpetual change and renewal requirement of a democracy: government that serves the people.

This other thing, white national fascism, autocracy, built upon fearmongering that demonizes immigrants, that denigrates opposing ideas, that protects the criminals and punishes the victims…is inert. It intends to restrict change. It is meant to suffocate the voice and will of the people. It gerrymanders to hold onto power. It spreads lies about the security of voting to sow doubt, to challenge and upend the voice of the people when it loses. Autocrats serve no one but themselves.

More than to restrict the blossom-vote of democracy, the autocrats intend to kill the plant, cover the space with concrete, and erect a golden statue to dear leader. Lifeless. Corrupt. A sad monument to the gods of permanence.

We have the power to stop it. Our democracy can be reborn. Educating ourselves, sifting truth from lie, fact from fantasy, and then voting en mass as if our lives and livelihoods depend upon it – because they do.

The Weeping Man, 48″x36″, mixed media

read Kerri’s blog post about PEONIES

www.kerrianddavid.com

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Play And Walk Away [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 4, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

This is the season of vibrant color. The muted tones of winter have traveled through the pastels of early spring and stepped boldly into full saturation. The greens are not holding back. The magenta of the peony is unabashedly electric. The purple and blue blossoms on the trail demand an audience. Nature’s color wheel abandons the monochrome of the cold months and proudly and loudly performs in full contrast.

Breck-the-aspen-tree grows a few inches every day. “I wonder if we stared at Breck would we see her growing?” she asked.

We are on peony watch. It was only a few days ago that the tiny buds appeared and then like old-fashioned Jiffy pop they visibly swelled and are now bursting open. The peony flowers have a very short life-span so we give them our undivided attention and appreciate every eye-popping minute that they give us.

I bought a full color spectrum of cheap craft paint. I am in the mood to play and don’t want the expense of the paint to be a barrier. I don’t want taking-myself-too-seriously to be an obstacle. I have several small canvases and some panel pieces just waiting to be splashed. Master Miller sent me some cool painting tools so I’ve made a single rule that no brushes are allowed until the final washes – and the only brush allowed is a cheap 3″ house painting brush. Only the cool tools, scrapers, wipers, palette knives, crayons, my hands…and anything found on the shop floor. No thinking is permitted, just playing, impulse and intuition. Play and walk away. There will be plenty of time for serious study in the fall.

I want to take full advantage of the fearless energy of spring.

Kerri calls this little ditty “Primary.”

read Kerri’s blogpost about COLOR

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At The Edge [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 28, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Standing at the edge of the lake, looking east, I know Michigan is out there somewhere. I’ve never seen it myself but I have it on good authority that if I paddled my kayak in a straight line I’d eventually bump into it. Standing at the edge I imagine the journey, and in my imagination, I survive storms and thirst and never-before-seen creatures. When I arrive in Michigan I tell the world what I have seen but the world does not believe me. No one has ever seen what I report to have seen – so I must be making it up. And, that’s always a possibility.

Standing at the edge of the lake it is also interesting to turn around, look west and gaze into the center of town. The community organizes itself, moving in synchronicity, but rarely recognizes it. Individuals move throughout their day, pushed this way and that by forces they cannot perceive or control, riding the currents believing that they are somehow separate and independent from the movement of the whole. Each and every moment they shape and are shaped, but believe themselves isolated and alone. Within them are never-before-seen dreams and desires. They do not dare to reveal them fearing they will engender cynicism. Dreams are tender things so they mute their imagining; blunting dreams is always a possibility.

I once taught that judgment is an alarm that sounds at the edge, an alert that the next step will be into the unknown. It is meant to make you aware of the awaiting kayak. It is the call to open your eyes to what-you-cannot-yet-see. It is there to alert you that the person standing before you is an undiscovered universe, different-than-you. They are unknown and vast. It is possible to run from the unknown. It is possible to step toward it.

Standing at the edge, the alarm sounding, debating whether to step or run away, only one thing is certain: this “other” IS one of the forces that moves you, shapes you, and might help you see what you cannot see from your safe center: that the isolation you experience is mostly self-imposed.

Also, to them, you are the scary unknown, the marker of difference, the vast unknown universe capable of changing them.

Sometimes standing at the edge, it is the best to stand still. To recognize the magnitude of all that you do not know. To weigh the enormous possibilities that await if you simply find the courage to take a step, to extend your hand, to say, “Hello.”

Pilgrimage, 14″x18″, mixed media on panel

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE LAKE

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Done! [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 21, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

I am losing the recall of words and names. It happens. I threatened to take a brain booster and the notion sent us into gales of laughter because, we concluded, I am a more likable person with a less-sharp brain. I will do better in the world now that the edges are rounding. It is best to walk into the future without the booster and a few less facts-at-my-fingertips.

I confess that with my diminished capacity I have experienced greater contentment. Knowledge was armor and with less access to weaponry I’m having to exercise a different set of skills: keeping my mouth closed, listening, not-knowing…the things I’ve pursued my entire life but am now able to achieve because I have to practice them. Life is funny.

I’m splashing paint. I have a plethora of old canvas and odd shaped boards. Simultaneous to my new less-than-sharp brain, when in the studio, I’m experiencing the deep desire not to think about anything. To paint with no other purpose than to see what happens. Experiment. Art as life in the laboratory. Twice in the last week Kerri has come into the studio to see what I’m working on and said, “I like this one.” When I ask her what she sees, she squints her eyes, approaches the easel, and flips the painting over. Up is down and down is up. It is my clue that the painting is nearly complete.

“What would you call this?” It is always my second question: Without hesitation she gives it a name. I marvel at what she identifies in the splashes. I call the painting, “Done!”

Inevitably on the trail, she “Ooooohs” and kneels to capture the tiniest of blossoms. It is the time of year that nature gives her too much to photograph. We stop every few feet. And, although she has told me several times the names of each flower, the names never stick. That is not new. When I was auditioning actors I asked them to wear the same clothes during callbacks since I’d better remember their work by what they wore, not by their names. Visual memory. For me, the tiny blossoms are like actors. I recognize them without their names getting in the way of my appreciation.

Perhaps my recent word-recall-struggles are merely a matter of me becoming more of who I have always been? I’d pose the question to Kerri but she’d squint her eyes, flip me on my head and tell me that I was “Done!” Make no mistake, I’d be very careful NOT to ask her my second question! I do not want to know what title she’d affix to me, especially flipped over, with all the blood finding its way back to my brain.

After The Storm

read Kerri’s blogpost about TINY FLOWERS

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The Necessity Of Texture [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 14, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

“I like the flower against the wood,” she said. A statement of texture. Variance is infinitely more visually interesting than uniformity. Innovation is more about deviance than it is about conformity. Ingenuity is the blossom of wild imagination and not the child of practicality.

In every aspect of life, the pursuit of a question is far more important than the regurgitation of an answer. Learning is never about the answer. Life is never about having an answer. It is never about the hard-held-belief; it is about the capacity to challenge every scary assumption. It is about stepping beyond judgement into the unknown. That is known as expansion. It requires an open-mind.

The maga-man looked mockingly at the interviewer and said, “I don’t care what (the wannabe-dicator) does as long as he owns the libs.” What does that mean, to own the libs? The interviewer asked a maga-woman what she meant when she used the term “woke”? Like the maga-man, she has a particular hatred for folks who are “woke.” She admitted that she didn’t know what it meant but she’d heard it plenty of times and she knew she didn’t like it, whatever it is.

No ability to question or challenge. Regurgitation. This is known as a closed-mind.

To be educated – inquisitive – one need not pull a single right answer from a hat. It is far more essential to stoke curiosity and find a path of many answers en route to greater and greater questions. A single answer, unquestioned belief, though safe and perhaps temporarily gratifying, rarely provides life with texture and vitality.

It is not a mystery what will happen if this administration manages to scrub all the color from the nation, to eliminate the texture, the voices of dissent, to actually achieve dull conformity, the bland uniformity that they think will make America great. No variance. No diversity. No deviance. No ingenuity. No innovation. No imagination. No capacity to reach across difference.

A few questions, a recognition of the necessity of texture, might save this ailing nation a world of hurt and decades of self-inflicted pain.

Day Is Done (work in progress). Nothing but questions and texture.

read Kerri’s blogpost about WOOD ANEMONE

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Ode To Happy Accidents [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 7, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

The famous blue-green tint of the Ball jar is the result of a happy accident. In search of cheaper resources the brothers Ball moved their company from Buffalo, NY to Muncie, IN. The minerals found in the sand in Indiana differed from the minerals in the sand in Buffalo and voila! The glass it produced was blue-green.

The story of penicillin is also the story of a happy accident.

The history of abstract art is the story of visual happy accidents. There is a term for happy-accident-painters that I especially appreciate: intuitive painting. It is the art of self-discovery, the art of process over product. As Quinn would say, it is to cultivate serendipity. Jackson Pollock was an intuitive painter. Helen Frankenthaler was an intuitive painter. Hilma of Klint was an intuitive painter. The late work of Henri Matisse was intuitive.

Happy accidents are trial-without-error because each trial carries a discovery. In this definition, all of science is a happy accident; the accumulated knowledge derived from a mountain of experiments. The same is true in the history of art. “Try it and see what happens” leads to some surprising insights.

What happy-accident-insights can be gleaned from the life-long-experiment asking, “Who am I?” It is never a direct path. It is a circular route with a guide named Intuition who may encourage you to splash paint as a means of self-discovery or might load your bottom line with so much discontent that you move your glass company to Muncie in search of cheaper sand – only to find yourself renowned for a unique shade of blue-green.

The Stuff of Dreams, 24″x 24″, mixed media on a slab of acrylic

read Kerri’s blogpost about BALL JARS

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As Old As Aesop [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on April 30, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Isn’t it funny,” she said, “that we trust what comes out of the government of Pakistan more than we trust what comes out of our own government.”

Habitual lying destroys credibility. It is the point of Aesop’s fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf. It’s a story as old as, well, Aesop, who walked the earth and told stories in the 6th century BCE.

Our current unfolding fable begs the question, “What happens when the wolf and the lying boy are one and the same?” Like the fern in our garden the story is unfurling right before our eyes. What moral lesson might Aesop have spun into our developing fable? This lying boy/wolf is certainly feasting freely upon the sheep, all the while crying, “Wolf!” – as if he himself was under attack from every quarter. Has the point all along been to blunt the villagers’ response to genuine urgent warnings? To so completely break down communal trust that the people refuse to believe what they see with their own eyes?

Of course, Aesop has a caution, a moral reminder prepared for our rescue: abuse of trust always backfires. It’s a consequence as predictable and as old as, well, Aesop. The lying boy/gluttonous wolf will have his reckoning. Yet, the villagers will suffer the greater loss. No sheep. Broken trust. A fractured community wondering how to put the pieces back together again.

Sam The Poet, 48″x48″ acrylic on canvas

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE FERN

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Our Predicament [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on April 23, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’m not sure what you do for fun but lately I have a habit of Googling idioms. It’s a recent obsession since the advent of AI. It’s not the quick definition that tickles my fancy or the various context and meanings that AI provides. It’s that there is sometimes a bonus “What to do about it” section that I adore. And, why, exactly, do I love it so? It’s sanitized and, when read aloud, sounds like a transcript from a therapy session with an engineer. It’s the voice, the flat-character that sparks my imagination. For me, AI has a soma. It has a face, a voice, and desires a sense of humor.

Consider the idiom “hitting a brick wall”. AI adjusts his position on the couch and pronounces, “Stuckness.” I am visibly unimpressed. He continues, “Encountering an immovable object.” He clears his throat and attempts a smile but becomes self-conscious when I return a poker face. ” It might refer to mental exhaustion,” he adds to cover his discomfort. “It might be a creative-tank gone empty. No energy.” I nod, noncommittal. He asserts, “Writer’s block and hitting a brick wall are one and the same thing.” Again, I am unresponsive. My AI engineer-turned-therapist coughs and suggests that likely solutions would include taking a break or simply accepting my predicament. He adjusts his glasses and encourages me to reflect on how I got stuck in the first place so I might identify and remove the trigger. I squint. He is visibly uncomfortable, so he pulls one more platitude from his memory bank: “Seek a trusted colleague or a neutral party who can help you identify a solution that you cannot see.” He is visibly sweating-in-monotone.

“That’s why I’m here,” I say. “You seem to be a neutral party. But, can I trust you?” I ask. “That’s my question. Are you a truly a reliable colleague?”

My engineer-turned-therapist stares at me, unsure how to respond.

“It seems you’ve hit a brick wall,” I suggest. “Perhaps we should take a break and reflect on our predicament or simply accept our situation.”

http://www.davidrobinsoncreative.com

read Kerri’s blogpost about BRICK WALLS

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