What Do You See? [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

In this cloud Kerri sees a dragon. What do you see?

34 years ago Dave bought one of my paintings. It was so new that I’d neglected to sign it. In fact, I’d hung it on my living room wall because I wasn’t certain that it was finished. I was studying it. It was at best a happy accident that he even saw the painting. He loved it and bought it. I boxed it up and shipped it. I didn’t even have a proper photograph of it. Recently, out of the blue, he contacted me to ask if I might issue a certificate of authenticity. I was delighted to whip up a certificate for him but even more delighted to finally have a photo of the painting.

During our email exchange he asked me a question that is commonly asked of artists: “Maybe you could help me with a conversation I have had countless times with my wife and friends over the years.What is going on in the painting?” I smiled, knowing that he was going to hate my answer.

The first rule of artistry, as it was pounded into me, is to never answer the question, “What’s going on in the painting?” Or the song. Or the dance. The reason has nothing to do with keeping it a secret or whipping up a mystery. The reason is that “the art” happens in the moment of direct engagement, the moment when someone (not the artist) sees something in the painting, something personal. Something they bring to it or pull from it. They re-create the painting as theirs. That moment is a moment of creation. It’s the reason I get cranky at curators who feel the need to tell an audience what a painting means or what is going on in the composition; the curator steps between the viewer and their direct experience. They interrupt the creation. It’s like a priest inserting himself between a worshipper and their direct personal communion with their higher power. Some things need no interpretation.

Art is meant to open people to personal insight, to evoke questions or a deeply personal response to what they perceive. To spark conversation and lively debate.

When an artists tells someone what they intended, they are closing down the possibilities, stopping the moment of re-creation.

Dave wrote, “I have had people say it’s a panoramic of a hectic bar scene complete with a dog. Others say it’s showing an individual struggling with themselves, or a metaphysical exercise with multiple persons showing multiple emotions. Any light you can shine on the subject of the painting would be very helpful.” I adored every interpretation he shared.

Many years ago, at my very first art show, during the opening, I followed two old guys around the gallery. They did not know that I was the artist. I followed them so I could eavesdrop on their very lively conversation. They speculated about the meaning of each piece. I was amazed at what they saw. They had fun debating the sanity of the artist. They finally concluded that I must be insane BUT wrapped in their conclusion was the single best compliment I have ever received. After determining that I was insane, one of the gents leaned into his friend and said, “All of the good ones are, you know.”

Imagine how disappointed they’d have been if I had tagged along and told them what each piece meant to me. Trust me, their interpretations were infinitely more interesting than my intention just as, for Dave and his friends, a hectic bar scene with a dog or an internal struggle or a metaphysical exercise…are wildly more satisfying than any light I might shine on the painting. My light would kill the fun and the power of their re-creation.

What do you see? Kerri sees a dragon in the clouds…

Untitled, circa 1992, approx. 36″ x 112″, acrylic, house paint, animation cell paint on canvas

read Kerri’s blogpost about DRAGON IN THE CLOUDS

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The Willingness To Change [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

We will have a bumper crop of tomatoes this year. The heat, the humidity, the ample rain have provided the perfect tomato growing conditions.

Keep in mind that I am not an expert on tomato growing conditions. I have no knowledge and limited experience growing tomatoes so when I assert that we have perfect-tomato-growing-conditions I am being hyperbolic. I really don’t know. I am borrowing statements from 20 who is a seasoned grower of tomatoes. I do know and can write with certainty that our tomato plants are a’ poppin’. They are climbing to the sky. They are out of control.

What is it in us that needs to be right, with or without knowledge of the subject? Or at least appear to be? I suppose it is not a trait unique to our time but is a characteristic common in human beings. What is it in us that needs our opinions and judgments to masquerade as facts?

We live in the age of rabid confirmation bias. We seek easy reinforcement of what we believe-to-be-true while soundly rejecting any fact or mountain-of-data that contradicts what we believe. Every day we witness leaders make up what they want to be true, what they want us to believe. They ask us not to believe our eyes and many – too many – comply. Firmly planted into lazy minds is the phrase, “Fake News”.

For instance, elections in these United States are – and have always been – safe. Actual incidents of corruption or fraud in our elections are so minuscule that they are statistically zero. You’d never know that if you listened to the current occupant of the White House, the Speaker of the House or the maga republicans who currently clamor to pass a bill that will rob people of color and women of the right to vote. They commit fraud in the name of fraud prevention – and their base eats it like candy. People-who-want-to-believe-what-they-want-to-believe so participate in the destruction of the very system they claim to defend.

It would only take a moment to check the verity of their belief. That, to me, is the ultimate tragedy of our times: we’d rather defend a lie than confront a truth. We’d rather vehemently insist on our righteous belief, arguing over the existence of the iceberg in our path rather than turn the Titanic in time. As we are discovering, as becomes clearer every day in this kakistocracy, the USA is not unsinkable.

And it would only take a minute. And some courage. And some commitment to fact.

In 2020 we saw the insurrection with our own eyes. People died. In the wind-up to the insurrection we heard the loser-of-the-election call the Georgia secretary of state asking to “find” enough ballots to overturn the election. The loser spent months sowing the seeds of doubt in our elections, whipping his followers into a frenzy, readying them for violence because he knew he would lose. We are now, in 2026, witnessing a repeat performance, only this time it is more dangerous. We are everyday inundated with the false claim that our elections are fraudulent – and witnessing the republican party pretend that it is so. They act “as if”. It is a stage-performance with very real consequences that could include the end of our democracy.

Just a little commitment to fact. And some courage.

We must all face the fact that we cannot survive in a nation of dueling “facts”. The white nationalist fantasy of pure blood is – a fantasy. We are a diverse nation that strives for equity and inclusion. We are a nation of laws and not a nation of tyrant kings. Voter fraud is concocted by fraudsters who intend to usurp power from the hands of the people so they might forever live above the law.

If these republicans are successful in their attempted coup, they will successfully flip every statement I just wrote. We will be a nation subject to the rage of white supremacists, an authoritarian nation with the power firmly in the hands of the few, their crimes never subject to the law. We will be a democracy in memory only.

Truth takes just a few minutes to verify. And some courage. And the willingness to change when the facts do not support belief. Truth requires the ethical fortitude to call a lie a lie. Just a little commitment to fact.

read Kerri’s blog post about TOMATOES

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All Feminine [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

If the sun is symbolic of male energy, Apollo and his chariot, then the moon is all feminine. Artemis. Selene. Isis. Parvati. Yemaya. Durga. Cihuacoatl, Kali. Mary.

The moon provides a symbolic-something that the sun does not: it changes.

While we use both the sun and the moon to mark time, the moon shapeshifts in her cycle-path around the earth. She waxes and wanes. Hers is a more complex symbology. She will have you listen to your intuition. She will ask you to close your eyes and feel. She will point you in the direction of your heart. She will receive your yearnings and your whispered prayers and hold them close until you are ready to live them. She will slip through your fingers. She will have you drop the reins and allow the horse to run.

Not so much the sun. He’ll send you outside to play. He’ll send you to school to develop your reason.

I wonder at the long-ago people who looked to the sky and understood the direct relationship between their survival and the primal forces called sun and moon. The stars. They slowly developed their relationship and participation with these energies, recognizing the movement of the celestial forces that also moved within their bodies. They associated. They identified. They engaged.

They symbolized, assigning identities and attributes that aligned the deep mystery of their existence with the celestial bodies that oriented them to the seasons and cycles of life. They mythologized. They worshiped. They personified, projecting themselves into the dance of it all. Storying.

Yin and yang. Outer focus and introspection. Birth and rebirth. Male and female in balance.

Theirs was an experience of direct connection. Their symbols were not intellectual abstractions like ours. Their symbols were alive, open gates to the mystery. They cast themselves as part-of rather than as removed-and-above-it-all. Their relationship with the crescent moon or the summer sun would not allow them to treat the earth as resource to be exploited. They had more respect for themselves than that.

They did not fear the power of the feminine moon. They did not fight to control the tides.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE MOON

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A Sap Older Than Memory [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

“Look, we don’t love like flowers with only one season behind us; when we love, a sap older than memory rises in our arms.” ~ Rainier Maria Rilke

If I knew then what I know now. The younger version of me had love all wrong. It was something I chased, pursued. Why does it take so long to understand that Love is something I give? It’s what I bring to life rather than something I get from it.

Maybe my younger self tried to squeeze love into a too-small-box. The Greeks understood the word “love” to have 4 different meanings. The young seeker of romantic love, Eros, eventually arrives at the doorstep of Agape, unconditional love. Self-Less. It takes some life experiences, some serious folly and shedding of skin to approach the house of unconditional Agape.

Maybe I didn’t have it wrong after all. Love has age-and-stage progressive revelations. Agape rarely opens its door to the young. “Go out and play!” Agape instructs the young-and-wild-at-heart. Love is an ancient actor that wears many masks.

“Do not divert your love from visible things. But go on loving what is good, simple and ordinary; animals and things and flowers, and keep the balance true.” ~ Rainier Maria Rilke

It rained all day. Not a pitter-patter rain but a raucous downpour. After – or in between the waves – I can’t remember, we went out back to check the garden, to upright the tomatoes. The air was clean and humid-heavy; a paradox. Dogga grew damp from inspecting the grasses. Kerri bent close to the flower to capture the raindrops resting on the purple petals. Superbells. Plum made more plummy.

It was like a light going on or, yes, a door opening. “I” disappeared, “I” burst like a soap bubble, and for a moment there was only this. Agape. Love.

“Trees do not force their sap, nor does the flower push its bloom.” ~ Rainier Maria Rilke

read Kerri’s blogpost about SUPERBELLS

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Simple And Innate [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Dogga is a master digger. Mostly he digs to produce cool dirt to lay on; a heavy black coat in the heat of the summer months requires cooling ingenuity.

Originally, we tried to stop his innate digging abilities. Then we realized that he’d already worn several serious velodrome paths in the yard from his enthusiastic circle-running, so what possible damage could an unsightly hole or two do to our backyard aesthetic? Besides, his efforts have a delightful side benefit: they create the perfect bird-dirt-bath dirt. Everyday the neighborhood birds flock to the Dogga-dirt-spot like Romans to the baths.

Lately, since he is grown wobbly in his old age, I periodically fill-in the canyons-he-creates so he doesn’t accidentally swing wide in his circle-running and trip in a hole-of-his-own-making. Besides, it gives him more cool dirt to excavate.

It’s the pure joy he experiences in a hole-well-dug that makes us smile with every new crater. Dirt flies, he occupies his new cool dirt mat, and revels in deep Dogga-Dogga satisfaction.

Sometimes I am astounded at what actually fills me with love and appreciation for life. It’s not complicated. It’s simple – and innate – as Dogga digging a hole.

read Kerri’s blogpost about DOGGA-HOLES

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Perhaps The Sun [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

These soft petals belie the harsh thrumming that they survived. Most of the peonies did not fare well in the wave after wave of storms. Petals on the ground, stems and leaves drooped, heavy from the rain. It was mere happenstance that this peony was a late bloomer. Unlike its fellows, it opened to the world in the aftermath. The sun returned and it stood tall and responded. A single witness to the wreckage. Compassion made it gentle.

We took a walk in between the storms. Most of the neighborhood was out, ostensibly to survey the damage but I know better. Storms bring people out. People who ordinarily do not think to stop and talk will spend hours after a storm or quake comparing notes, sharing experiences. Witnesses to the wreckage, many people in our neighborhood, people we did not know but who seemed to know us, stopped us to expressed condolences for our tree. We swapped stories. We expressed concern for each other. “Do you have power yet?” Politics were nowhere to be found. Compassion made us a community. Gentle. Caring.

When we arrived home I asked Kerri, “Why does it take a storm to bring out the best in people?” Like me, she had no answer. I’ve experienced this tiny miracle before, after 9/11, after the Northridge earthquake…many times. It is in our nature to help one another when mother nature shakes us awake.

But what of the times when we wreak havoc on each other? The same rule does not apply. The daily mass shootings divide us. Our leaders offer empty thoughts and prayers. We make war on each other; is that not an unnatural disaster worthy of bringing people to the streets? Ukraine. Palestine. The Sudan. On and on and on. Age after age. Man made disasters seem to anesthetize us or at the very least to confuse us. They evoke the opposite response: they numb us. Divide us. Instead of compassion they conjure antipathy. Madness. Is that in our nature or is it unnatural?

It seems we return to our senses when the scale of our man-made disaster takes on the scale of a storm sent by mother nature. Is it the scale of destruction that at last wakes us up? An earthquake or tornado is out of our control: is that why we soften and take to the streets to find each other? Wars and guns and supremacy-fantasies are within our control: is that why we harden and turn our backs on the pain until the wreckage is so undeniable that we are forced to say, “Enough!”? We awake, at least for a short time, from the fantasy?

Doesn’t it feel as if this nation is at long last waking up? Is it finally – finally – too much? Perhaps the sun is calling us out of the maga-fantasy-storm, to witness the wreckage, to reach out our hands and ask, “Are you okay?”

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE PEONY

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Having Enough [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

When we are in need of a quick and easy sunset getaway, a mental and emotional break from a hectic day, we drive 15 minutes south to Winthrop Harbor and slow-walk the boardwalk that runs along the marina. The sound of the gulls, the rhythmic clang of buckle-on-mast, the quiet plop of a line cast by someone fishing from the dock, the breeze off the lake…it quiets the mind. On the weekends, bands play from a small stage to people sitting on the grass adjacent to the boathouse where Harbor Brewing runs a pop-up beer garden throughout the summer months. It sometimes feels old-worldly: people gathered together to drink a beer at sunset, tapping their feet to music from a local band. Some folks surround fire pits. Others sit in fold-up chairs, blankets at the ready in case the wind shifts off the lake. The siren-smell of brisket and burgers wafts over the gathering.

It is enough. It is more than enough. Simple people enjoying their simple moment.

Last week Kerri wrote a post that hit-the-nail-on-the-head. She asked, “What’s missing?” in the hearts and minds of the republicans and the administration currently robbing the country blind. Her answer? Reverence. In this cohort there is no reverence for nature, for people, for ideas, for science, for the future, for the past. There is only insatiable hunger for more, more, more. They are hungry ghosts. “In Buddhism…These beings are depicted with scrawny necks, tiny mouths, and huge bellies, representing an eternal, painful inability to satisfy their desires.” (Wikipedia) We are subjected to a gaggle of people who live in the existential emptiness of “never having enough”.

Reverence. Awe. Wonder. Veneration. These are born of respect. They require a certain humility that comes from knowing-to-your-bones what it is to “have enough.”

If a picture paints a thousand words then all we need to truly understand what’s happening in this republican administration is Paul Cadmus’ painting, Gluttony.

Morbidly wealthy. Hoarders. Absent of reverence. Completely incapable of understanding what makes (or will make) this nation great: simple hardworking people who believe in equality and fairness, gathering together to share the fruits of their labor, the deep satisfaction of neighbors playing music, of the sun setting over the harbor, enjoying a meal or buying a beer for friends. Slow-strolling the boardwalk. Knowing to their bones the enormity of appreciation that comes from having enough.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SUNSET AT THE MARINA

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The Force of Flowering [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

If you’ve been following our posts you will have noticed – as we have noticed – that we are lately schizophrenic in our writing. One day we are blistering critics of the abuses of the current administration while the next day we write about the peace and presence of our lives. Utter discontent and sublime contentment all in the same week. I doubt that we are unique in our split personality. I believe we are reflecting the split-personality that is contemporary life in these un-United States. It is my bet that you are as whiplashed by the struggle for equilibrium amidst the daily dose of chaos as we are.

What we write is supposed to come from the image at the top of the post, thoughts inspired by a photograph. Lately, however, what we write depends often upon the circumstance of the moment. For instance, last week we sat down to write and Kerri said, “Before we start I have to read you something.” What she read to me was so upsetting that I wrote a rant about what she shared – and found a way to sense-squeeze it into the photograph.

This morning we laughed at our schizophrenic writing. And, we acknowledged that it is exactly what this autocratic administration desires to create: a populace that is reactive and so under assault that it doesn’t know where to look next.

During COVID we intentionally transformed our backyard into a sanctuary. In an unsafe world we needed a place where we felt at peace. This spring, although we haven’t discussed it, we are doing it again, we are creating a sanctuary, cultivating beauty and quiet, we are creating a space where we can rejuvenate, where we can unplug from the brutality. A space to breathe.

We’ve been watching the peonies bud and are taken by the sheer force of their flowering. You can almost see the pressure building in the bud, ready to burst into blossom. It has become for me a harbinger of hope. It is the same pressure I see gathering in my friends who, like me, have had enough of the chaos and corruption. It is the same energy that fills our conversations when we talk of voting in the fall. It is the pressure-driven transformation changing reactivity into intentional positive action: the reclamation of democracy and decency and sanctuary, a safe and productive home for all.

read Kerri’s blogpost about PEONIES

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And We All Know It [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” ~ Mark Twain

The boats are slowly returning to the marina. The beach at Eichelman Park has been combed. Signs of summer’s onset. The Saturday Farmer’s Market moved from its winter quarters and has returned to the mall in front of the museums, running all the way to the Tap House. Signs of normalcy. The people are leaving their houses to purchase flowers and vegetables and mingle in the public square.

Yet, amidst the signs of normalcy, everything is different.

There is so much that the republicans claim to know for sure that just ain’t so. Despite what they espouse, despite what they “know for sure,” the 2020 election was not stolen. Our elections to this point in time are not and never have been rigged or corrupt. The January 6th insurrectionists are not innocent and they are not victims of the justice department. The president is not of sound mind. He is not innocent of his enumerable crimes. His cabinet is not competent.

They want us to believe what they know for sure, that this is normal – but it just ain’t so.

And now they wonder why they are in trouble. They’ve ridden a herd of lies for a decade. They ask us to not believe what we see. And now their only route to holding power is to gerrymander. While currently holding all the cards-of-power they claim to be the victims in this hot mess that they’ve enabled. Midwives to autocracy.

It’s their insistence upon the lie, even though stripped bare-to-the-bone and completely exposed, that is the most troubling. For years we’ve asked what might be a bridge too far for these lemmings in cowboy clothes, these guys and gals that swear they are cleaning the swamp and representing the common folk, all the while engorging their morbid wealth by sucking the lifeblood from the people they pretend to defend. Vampires all.

It’s what we know for sure. It is so. We can see it. And no amount of gaslight can obscure what we see. Afraid of their constituents, they cancel their town halls, they flee the capitol rather than vote to intervene in the criminal-in-chief’s latest war-of-choice.

The boats slowly return to the marina. The beach at Eichelman has been combed. Signs of normalcy in a time when nothing is really normal. This would-be-despot and his party-of-pretenders are naked and corrupt – and falling apart. And we all know it.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE BEACH

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Furtherance [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

“Perseverance is the foundation of all actions.” ~ Lao Tzu

Breck-the-aspen-tree is our backyard living monument to perseverance. She survived and now thrives despite a multitude of obstacles, least of which was…us.

We plucked Breck from a grocery story in Breckenridge, Colorado. She was an impulse buy and came in a little pot that barely fit in the back of our car. Breck’s branches had to bend a bit to make the journey. She survived the roadtrip home and struggled mightily after being replanted into an enormous clay pot. She lived on our deck for the first three years. We talked to her throughout the summer. We wrapped her pot with blankets to keep her roots from freezing during the winter months.

Each spring we watched for signs that she survived and each year she rewarded us with fragile buds and minimal growth. We knew we needed to plant her in a permanent spot and our first choice nearly killed her. Within weeks she dropped all of her leaves and turned a sad shade of grey. In desperation we dug her up and moved her into another more sunny spot and waited. With no signs of life for the rest of the summer season and throughout the fall, we were certain that we’d killed her. But, she persevered.

The next season she recovered, produced a host of oddly outsized leaves, and grew a foot. The next year she grew another foot and leafed like a normal aspen tree. The year after that she boomed.

Breck is now taller than the garage. She’s no longer a backseat traveler. Instead, she is hostess to the birds who frequent our yard. We stand at her base looking up and marvel at the new growth. She is nearly a foot taller today than she was a month ago. She is a masterful quaker, playing the breezes, and has no problem bending with the wind.

We regularly stare at her and utter, “I can’t believe it. Look at her.”

Here is the full quote by Lao Tzu: “Of all that is good, sublimity is supreme. Succeeding is the coming together of all that is beautiful. Furtherance is the agreement of all that is just. Perseverance is the foundation of all actions.”

I looked up the word “furtherance”. Lao Tzu uses it often. It seems central to his philosophy and I was taken by his definition, “Furtherance is the agreement of all that is just”. Furtherance: the act of helping something advance, develop, or succeed. Now, isn’t that a timely and profound sentiment? Helping something (or someone) advance, develop or succeed is a coming together (an agreement) of all that is fair, deserved, morally right (just).

Wouldn’t it be profound if we could look at each other and say of ourselves, our community and nation, that we have succeeded by bringing together all that is beautiful, that we persevered through a dark and ugly time, arriving at last at a dedicated furtherance, helping each other develop, advance and succeed?

Do you see the loop? Succeeding is the coming together of all that is beautiful. Furtherance is the act of helping each other and our planet succeed (the coming together of all that is beautiful). Perseverance leads to the sublime. Breck is our constant reminder of all that is possible if we just keep trying.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BRECK

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