artistry | The Direction of Intention

Look For Erle [on KS Friday]

Posted on March 29, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

erle cover copy

When you pull up Kerri’s page on iTunes you’ll notice that they have a hard time placing her music in a category. New Age? Easy listening? Classical? Country? One does not easily fit into the filing system until one can be clearly labeled. How can you be effortlessly labeled?

It’s a challenge all of us face. What’s the label? How do you fit? And (here’s the rub), it’s bad enough that the greater-world-filing-system needs a label to locate you, the real confusion comes in the labels we impose on ourselves. Are you a dentist? A liberal? A conservative? A mother? A foodie? Self-made, dependent, injured, Christian (which branch?), Muslim, agnostic, vegetarian, cowboy, rich, poor, retired, globalist, nationalist, capitalist, socialist? Do you “know?” Are you the righteous? Professor? How do you place yourself in the greater-world-filing system? Never mind how the “the system” attempts to squeeze you into a role, what’s the little box that you try to squeeze yourself into?

Is that who you are? Is that little box where you belong? Is it the totality of your being?

Sometimes I think we spend most of our lives dividing ourselves so that we might fit into a very small box. And, what we do to ourselves we most certainly do to others. They. Them. Not us.

Divide. Label. Locate.

Reduce. Contain. Shelve.

Although there is a certain amount of safety-feeling when living in a very small box, there is also very little vitality. Little things look big from the vantage point of a tiny box. Little things look threatening from the confines of a too-tight label. Little boxes are petri dishes for big fear.

We bandy these words about and paste them on the walls of our too-little-boxes: mindfulness, wholeness, vitality. “This life is not a dress rehearsal.” “You are infinite potential.” “Today is day one.” Maya Angelou, Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. Peace.

These ideals, all of them, wonder, magic, love, artistry, unity, harmony,…truth…crackle beyond the label. They are there – outside the box – and they are never found in the direction of division. They are always present if you care to put down the label-maker.

Get out of your box and turn around. Maybe spin around and around and lose your balance like you did when you were young and less needy of location. Look at the mystery that chases you and chase it. Play tag with this life. Remember how you laughed just because? Reach.

Kerri stood on the edge of a canyon and, although afraid of heights, she threw open her arms. Kirsten called me to tell me. “Mom’s on the edge,” she whispered into the phone. “I’m really proud of her.”

note: this composition has nothing to do with what I just ranted about except for maybe this: the only locators that really matter are the people who love you and show up for you. Your friends along the way. This is the label I am most attached to: Kerri and I are very rich in friends.

OLD FRIENDS REVISITED on the album RELEASED FROM THE HEART is available on iTunes & CDBaby

read Kerri’s blog post about ERLE

old friends revisited/released from the heart ©️ 1995 kerri sherwood

erle ©️ 2019 (and beyond) kerri sherwood

Filed under: Edges, KS Friday, Rants, Seeing, The Direction of Intention, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, boxes, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, division, erle, harmony, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, labels, life, magic, mahatma gandhi, maya angelou, mother teresa, society6.com/davidrobinson, society6.com/kerrisherwood, spirituality, unity, wholeness, wonder | Leave a comment »

Re-Member [on DR Thursday]

Posted on March 28, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

a morsel of ‘alki beach’

I was surprised. This was the first painting Horatio pulled from my stacks. It’s an older painting, a piece I’d forgotten. “I like this one,” he said, and told me why.

Horatio is a great artist so it was a rare treat to rummage around the studio and talk about my work. I don’t often talk about it, not really. When showing paintings, people ask questions and I usually deflect the question back at them. It’s a rule. Artists often get in the way of the relationship between their painting and an observer. I want people to see what they see, not what I think they should see. There is no right answer or any one way of seeing a painting. That’s the point; they have the power to re-create it for themselves. The magic is on the purity of the relationship. I’m more interested in their re-creation than I am in what I think they should see.

Horatio gave me a great gift. He helped me see ALKI BEACH anew. He helped me remember and in remembering I saw the painting again as if for the first time. It was like meeting an old friend after many years. Since Horatio’s visit I’ve had a chance to chat with ALKI BEACH over coffee. We reminisced about the day, the event that inspired it. I remember how the sun and air felt walking that day so long ago on Alki Beach. I remember sitting in my chair in my studio staring at a blank canvas. I remember the birds, the gulls and crows and eagles. I remember reaching for the charcoal.

I remember my surprise at what emerged on the canvas, the day I stepped back, paint on my face and hands, and saw ALKI BEACH for the first time. I remember thinking, “I like this one.”

alki beach, acrylic, 36 x 36IN

read Kerri’s blog post about ALKI

alki beach ©️ circa 2009, david robinson

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, studio melange, Uncategorized | Tagged: acrylic painting, alki beach, alki beach painting, artistry, beach, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, gulls, Horatio, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, painting, seeing, society6.com/davidrobinson, storying | Leave a comment »

Reflect On It [on KS Friday]

Posted on March 22, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

I so loved Kerri’s post yesterday that, today, I’m reflecting it back to her.

Do we ever really know what it takes to do someone else’s job? We don’t know the tools used, the research done, the years of training and experience, how someone perceives their own work. We can only guess and, most often, fall desperately, arrogantly, audaciously off the mark.

Kerri’s piano dominates her studio. A black 6’7″ Yamaha grand. It is not a show piece, it is a workhorse. Littering the music stand are stacks of composition notebooks, idea journals, sketches (she is visual) and pile after pile of church music – old hymnals, new downloads of pieces she’s considering for her ukulele band, choir or handbell choir. On the floor are several heavy binders arranged in alphabetical order with the music already played, binders from the 30 years of experience as a minister of music. There is yet another stack reserved for pieces she’s considering playing with Jim, her brilliant guitarist. Lining the walls are ukuleles, a few guitars, a cello, a keyboard, several music stands, more stacks of the original recordings of her albums (note: they are not stored as sacred artifacts. Rather, they are piled willy-nilly for easy reference). My wife is a Yamaha artist (look it up) and her constantly shifting studio topography (ever-moving piles) is testament to the music in her soul, her very-long history of artistry.

Now, I’ve sung a song or two in the shower. When I met Kerri I told her that I didn’t sing and she fairly quickly called my bluff. I sing in her choir. I delight in singing with her and Jim. They are kind and pretend that I add something to their mix. Nowadays I can even pick out a slow tune on the ukulele!

All of this, however, does not make me capable of really understanding how Kerri plays or composes. I can pluck a note. I can warble a song. I will, however, never have mastery of all the instruments, I will never approach her capacity to transpose on the fly, or compose poetry and melody. I will never hear the nuance she hears, the music of silence. I do not have a natural gift of music nor an entire lifetime to exercise and explore it.

I do not know the tricks of the trade she has accumulated over decades of honing her expertise. Nor do I know the knowledge base she brings about other artists, other musicians and compositions, the instrumentation, the way she ‘feels’ an audience and adjusts, the very technical details and the very heart-based intuitions she has learned through many, many years of study and practice. I can’t understand or even try to predict the amount of time it takes (or doesn’t take) for her to conceptualize, to explore, to create, to review, to assess, to adjust, to re-create. I can respond to her work but I cannot define it, nor would it be credible for me to even try to do so. Out of respect for her work, this ‘music’ that is one of the essential things that define her, I know that I really have no idea. I will never approach all that she knows. What I can do is appreciate the enormity of her talent, the endless hours of study, pursuit, practice, passion, experimentation, frustration, rehearsal, writing, performance, teaching, research, recording, pondering, pounding and playing and playing and playing – a lifetime of experience – that has brought her to this place where she creates beautiful music that seems to take no effort whatsoever.

Making it look easy. It takes a lifetime. The woman who delivers our mail has been a postal carrier for 30 years. It is hubris to think I know what that takes. It is utter arrogance to think I could pick up a mailbag and simply know what she knows, do what she does. Experience is invisible. Value is too easily reduced to dollars and cents. As Kerri wrote yesterday, with regard to anyone, the work they do, the life-path they bring to their work, we have no idea. It is both humbling and respectful to take a step back and consider the invisible, to remember that what appears easy comes from years and years of very hard work.

read Kerri’s blog post on KS FRIDAY

http://www.kerrisherwood.com

Filed under: Art, Creativity, KS Friday, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, composer, composition, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, experience, intuition, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, knowledge base, mastery, music, musician, piano, society6.com/davidrobinson, society6.com/kerrisherwood, yamaha artist | Leave a comment »

Mix It [on DR Thursday]

Posted on March 21, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

palette copy

True confessions: I never clean my palette. I like the messy build up of color. I like the chunky texture. It serves as a gunky history of my work, a genealogy of paintings past. And then, over time, it becomes a tactile work of art in its own right. Unfettered by any of the mental gymnastics or over-ponderous considerations that plague my “real” work, it is the closest to child-mind that I will achieve. It is accidental. It is free.

This might be a stretch but it is, for me, nevertheless true. I love my palette because it is the place of alchemy in my artist process. It is the true liminal space. I begin with pure color. I smashed the pure color together with another color and transform it into a third color, the hue I intend. On a palette, color becomes intention. And then, once transformed, with a brush or knife I lift the color-intention from my palette and in an action that is often more responsive than creative, I place it onto a canvas. It transforms yet again relative to all the color it touches. An image emerges. More color is called for.

And, somewhere in this call and response of color, I become like the palette. The pass-through of alchemy, the door that color passes through en route to something beautiful. And, in the process, perhaps I, too, in my messy build up of life/color, grow closer to that child mind. Unfettered. Accidentally interesting. Free.

“You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough” ~ William Blake

read Kerri’s blog post about my PALETTE

untitled, mixed media 48 x 48IN

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Uncategorized | Tagged: alchemy, art, artistry, child mind, color, creativity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, intention, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, metaphor, painting, palette, process, transformation, William Blake | Leave a comment »

Listen To The Heart [on KS Friday]

Posted on March 15, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

MISSING song box copy

This morning, sitting to write about this piece, I find that I have too much to say. Too much to say about missing and memory and delight and yearning. In trying to choose a thought-path I realized that all of my blah-blah would simply get in the way. My words will get in the way of this heart composition. I will only offer that this MISSING will lift you. It will bring a knowing smile. It does for me.

I will let this beautiful composition speak for itself. It is MISSING from Kerri’s first album RELEASED FROM THE HEART. Truly, it is from the heart.

MISSING from the album RELEASED FROM THE HEART is available on iTunes & CDBaby

read Kerri’s blog post about MISSING

missing/released from the heart ©️ 1995 kerri sherwood

Filed under: KS Friday, Love, studio melange, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, first album, heart, heart composition, kerri on cdbaby, kerri on itunes, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, memory, missing, released from the heart, society6.com/kerrisherwood, uplifting | Leave a comment »

Ask, “Why?” [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on March 4, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

guidance framed copy

I’m told that every evening of her life, Margaret would stop what she was doing, and go outside to watch the sun set. If she was on the phone she would hang up. If she was doing dishes she’d turn off the water. She’d step into her back yard and attend the setting of the sun. It was her ritual.

Last year, Kerri, my mom, and I took my dad back to visit the small town where he grew up. He wanted to live his life there but that was not to be. Now, he is sliding into dementia. Before his sun set he wanted to make at least one last pilgrimage to the place he’s always considered home.

I draw and paint. Not because I want to but because I have to. As far back as I can remember that has been true. The rest of this world seems like Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole. Mad. Illusory. Missing the point. I know what is solid and true when I step in front of a canvas. It’s a paradox, yes?

Why do people make paintings? Why do they compose music? Why are we tellers of story? Inventors of story? Poets? Budget makers and parents alike caution that there is no real value in the arts. They rarely make money. Money making as the ultimate arbiter of value makes for an empty world, indeed.

Why do people climb mountains, jump out of airplanes, or kayak over waterfalls?

“Why does she say, ‘guidance is eternal?'” Kerri asked. We were streaming an episode of Life Below Zero on the National Geographic site and the Boeing commercial came up for the umpteenth time. Amid images of advanced technology and machines that fly, the narrator begins a countdown, 10, 9, 8, guidance is internal, 6, 5,… “I think she’s saying that guidance is internal, not eternal.” We looked at each other. Either way, what a great phrase! Guidance is internal. Guidance is eternal.

Why do people step outside each evening of their lives to watch the setting sun? Return like salmon to their birthplace? Listen to the wind and run to their piano?

read Kerri’s blog post about GUIDANCE

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Merely A Thought Monday, The Direction of Intention, Uncategorized | Tagged: art, artistry, creating, creative process, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, eternal, eternal guidance, Guidance, inner guidance, inner voice, internal guidance, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, studio melange, value, values | Leave a comment »

Write The Essential [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on February 11, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’m not sure what stacks up around your house. At our house, the stacks are paintings, cartoons, designs, composition notes, manuscripts, folios, notebooks of ideas, scraps of paper jammed into the notebooks of ideas, lyrics a-go-go, and the supplies necessary to make the other stacks possible. Colored pencils, brushes, too many composition books, canvas, tissue paper, paint, sketchbooks, art books, and the stacks-and-stacks of stuff teetering on the piano and bench that somehow resemble a nest.

All of this is to note that we are fantastic generators of content and equally inept marketers of what we generate. Thus, the stacks. It was this realization – and the necessity of making a living – that one year ago gave birth to the melange. Melange means ‘mixture’ or ‘medley.’

The idea was simple: Monday would be dedicated to our cartoon, Chicken Marsala. Tuesday would be dedicated to our Two Artists designs. Wednesday was Flawed Cartoon day. Thursday was for my paintings. Friday was for Kerri’s music. We created a Society6.com store for each day, set about designing 5 product lines a week (oh, god,…more content). Through our blogs we’d write about and publish the day’s selection, he-said/she-said-style. People all over the world would read what we wrote, be captivated by the cartoon, design or composition, and race to the Society6.com store to buy a print or a mug or a laptop sleeve or a greeting card. Content out, income, well…in.

And, it happened. People all over the world read our blogs. And, almost no one raced to the Society6.com stores. We studied a few things, learned a few things, reconfigured, tried a few social-media-marketing variations, bought ad space, waved our hands, jumped up and down, danced silly dances – we pivoted and pivoted again.

Walk To The Other Side [on DR Thursday]

Posted on December 27, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

BlowingWishes Morsel copy

There is a ping-pong table in my studio that is piled high with paintings that are not yet stretched. And, because these paintings are constantly moving, pulled and tacked to the wall to be shown then placed back in the pile, they are stored with no particular order. This process of random stacking and re-stacking allows us to see the pieces from many different points of view; what was top is now bottom. It affords new perspectives, it helps me see again as if for the first time.

Pile It is such a simple thing and yet so hard to do – to let go of what we think is right, allowing a new perspective of something that we think we understand. The word I’ve learned to pay attention to is “think.” The skill of an artist is to see beyond what they “think.” The gift of the artist is to help others see beyond what they think. To pop open new perspectives and make space for new possibilities.

It is easy to confuse thinking (interpretation) with ‘seeing.’ They are not the same thing. It is so easy to believe ‘stuck thinking’ is ‘being right.’ It’s a good practice – a healthy practice – to spin things around a bit. To doubt what you think so you might have a more direct experience. So that you might see. So that you might learn. So that you might experience today as different from yesterday.

Life, as they say, is always found in the direction of not knowing.

Kerri calls this morsel BLOWING WISHES. It’s what you see if walk to the other side of the ping-pong table.

GREET THE DAY, mixed media 48 x 48IN (or bigger)

read Kerri’s blog post about BLOWING WISHES

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Seeing, Uncategorized | Tagged: artist, artistry, blowing wishes, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, doubt, greet the day, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, perception, perspective, seeing, seeking, society6.com/davidrobinson, thinking | Leave a comment »

Use 1000 Words [on DR Thursday]

Posted on December 20, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

Horses Morsel copy

this may or may not be complete. 48″ x 48″ as yet untitled

read Kerri’s blog post about this PAINTING

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, new painting, painting, process, society6.com/davidrobinson | Leave a comment »

Make Space [A SALE on DR Thursday]

Posted on December 13, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

What art offers is space — a certain breathing room for the spirit. ~John Updike

I feel most alive when I am painting. If I’m out of my center, upset, in despair, feeling blue, or swimming in a pool of self-pity, the quickest cure, the best medicine, is a trip to the studio. Life makes sense there. The conversations I have with canvas are not always easy but they are always generative. Love is like that.

And, like most artists, I love to paint but feel utterly inept when it comes to selling what I paint. Introverts are notoriously lousy salespeople. Inevitably, things stack up.

Give me a museum and I’ll fill it. ~Pablo Picasso

I am at least one museum short and need to clear some space. In the old days I would burn paintings, paint over them or give them away but nowadays Kerri would kill me if I tried any of those space-making strategies. Dying at my wife’s hands to create space seems counter-productive. She suggested A Sale.

The days you work are the best days. ~Georgia O’Keeffe

My best days are yet to come. A new wave of inspiration is rolling in.

One’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes. ~Andrew Wyeth

When you visit my site, you’ll see that I’ve listed some minimum prices. If you see a painting you love, reach for it. Make an offer.

The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense. ~Pablo Picasso

And so. Love runs deep. It makes no sense. The best things in life never do.

The No Sense No Space Sale.