creativity | The Direction of Intention

Figure It Out [on KS Friday]

Posted on November 2, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

figure it out songbox copy

Sometimes I am surprised at the memories a piece of music evokes. While listening to FIGURE IT OUT I was propelled way back in time into a specific moment, an acting exercise Jim Edmondson led with actors in the company at PCPA Theaterfest. It was an exercise in belief. He told them to imagine that their toddler had wandered away on the campus and was lost. “Find your child.”I watched Lisa, a terrific actress, tear across the campus calling out her child’s name. Searching, desperate. She was so committed that campus security came. People left their administrative offices to help with the search. She created belief. She brought us into her play. Jim stopped the exercise before the search for the imaginary child got out of hand.

It is the power of the artist. To pull us into a common story. To propel us into our distant past. To open possible paths forward, to stand in a shared vision. To help us across the boundaries of time and space and belief.

FIGURE IT OUT will propel you. The only question is where Kerri, through FIGURE IT OUT, will take you?

FIGURE IT OUT on the album RIGHT NOW is available on iTunes & CDBaby

read Kerri’s blog post about FIGURE IT OUT

figure it out/right now ©️ 2018 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Creativity, KS Friday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, belief, creativity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, figure it out, imagination, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, pcpa theaterfest, right now, studio melange, the melange, the power of art | Leave a comment »

Be The Storm [on Chicken Marsala Monday]

Posted on September 10, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

inspirationisa WITH EYES jpeg copy 2

“It is a sacred art that deals with revelation rather than observation.”~Jamake Highwater, The Language Of Vision

Tom used to say, “A writer writes and a painter paints.” Those are wise words grounded in the mechanics of art. Simply show up. Do the thing. Nuts and bolts. That’s the first step. Show up at the easel, on the dance floor, at the piano, at the writers desk and begin. Tom was a teacher and over his life heard an overabundance of excuses, reasons ‘why not.’ Said another way, he advised his students to stop thinking about it and do it. “Get out of your own way,” he’d counsel. That’s the second step. Horatio calls this step ‘trust-your-work.”

Show up. Do the thing. Get out of your own way. Trust your work.

And, what happens with trust? When the artist can get out of his/her own way, the sacred art, the art of revelation becomes possible. It’s a beautiful paradox. Show up and get out of the way. And, between those two actions, those crackling oppositions, a greater force, inspiration, gathers and releases like a storm.

September 1 – 16

read Kerri’s blog post about INSPIRATION IS A GATHERING STORM

www.kerrianddavid.com

inspiration is a gathering storm ©️ 2016/18 david robinson & kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Chicken Marsala Monday, Creativity, Metaphor, Uncategorized | Tagged: advice, artistry, chicken marsala, Chicken Marsala Monday, Chicken nugget, creativity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, force, inspiration, Jamake Highwater, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, metaphor, myth, paradox, society6.com/chickenmarsala, story. sense making, studio melange, The Language of Vision, the melange, trust | Leave a comment »

Fly Like An Artist [on Flawed Cartoon Wednesday]

Posted on August 8, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

This Flawed Cartoon originally came with a caption. Can you guess what it was? In selecting this week’s cartoon, Kerri and I both loved the image and rejected the caption. “It says much more without the words,” she said.

Without really intending it, a common theme emerged from our picks for this week’s melange: Unleash the power of your crayon. Living without fear. Breaking away from the flock. Together these might make a nice set of mantra-coasters for the artist’s path.

While you consider unleashing the power of your crayon have some fun and make up a caption for today’s Flawed. Send it to us. Who knows! You just might complete the coaster set with your submission. High Honor Indeed!

read Kerri’s blog post about BREAKING AWAY

www.kerrianddavid.com

LIKE US ON FACEBOOK

breakaway ©️ 2016/2018 david robinson & kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Edges, Flawed Cartoon Wednesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artists way, break away, creativity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fearless, flawed cartoon, Flawed Cartoon Wednesday, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, left hand path, power, society6.com/flawedcartoon, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Become Inspired [on Chicken Marsala Monday]

Posted on July 2, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

Brad asked a great question. What is it in us that needs to climb the highest mountain, run a faster mile, touch the moon, cure the disease, develop better and better widgets, sail toward the edge?

It is in our nature. Or, better, it IS our nature. Insatiable curiosity, the yearning to know en route to the next unknown. We are storytellers all! What’s next?

Boredom and apathy are learned skills. They are unnatural. It takes years of sitting in a desk to blunt a spirit. It takes 10,000 hours to grow deaf to the call of your soul.

The next time you tell yourself that “you don’t like change” or that “tomorrow will be just like today,” stop. Take a long slow breath and then do the dangerous thing: doubt what you think. It might just happen that you will hear the deeper call, the natural voice, inviting you out to play.

read Kerri’s blog post about Become Inspired

www.kerrianddavid.com

be careful you just might become inspired ©️ 2016 david robinson & kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Chicken Marsala Monday, Creativity, Edges, Uncategorized | Tagged: change, chicken marsala, Chicken Marsala Monday, Chicken nugget, creativity, curiosity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, exploration, human nature, inspiration, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, society6.com/chickenmarsala, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Hold On. Let Go. [on KS Friday]

Posted on June 29, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

Holding on. Letting go. The creative tension that describes life. Unlike other tensions, tug-of-war tensions, the creative kind is circular, a cycle as winter is to summer. It is a deep, slow moving river capable of carrying you away.

Give yourself a treat. Let go of the task at hand. Step into the river and let Kerri take you away.

HOLDING ON/LETTING GO on the album RIGHT NOW available in iTunes & CDBaby

read Kerri’s post on HOLDING ON/LETTING GO

www.kerrianddavid.com

holding on/letting go – right now ©️ 2010 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Creativity, KS Friday, Uncategorized | Tagged: creative tension, creativity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, energy, holding on/letting go, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, right now, society6.com/kerrisherwood, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Rise In The East [on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 21, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

When I first began writing this blog I wrote everyday. I did not identify myself as a writer. It seemed an outrageous commitment to write every day and I wondered if I would be able to sustain it. I quickly learned that the opposite was true. I found that I had too much to write about. I found that the act of writing required me to pay attention. There was something to write about everywhere I looked. I was not only learning to write. I was learning to see.

I have always been a painter. Seeing is central to any art form but especially useful in the art of painting. You’d be amazed at the multitude of colors in everything you see that your brain blends into a single color. Yellow. Blue. If you can open your eyes and see beyond the dullness of expectation, the numbing of your mind, you will gasp at the riches of it all. This life is complex, intimate, moving.

I’m working on the seventh painting of my earth interrupted series. Prussian blues and ochre, reds and sienna. I laugh each day that I step into the studio and begin work on this series. “What am I doing?” I silently ask and laugh. The answer is obvious. I am sailing toward the edge. I am trying to find what exists beyond my horizon, my comfort zone.

These morsels, snippets of my paintings, are doing what my blog challenge did for me so many years ago: opening my eyes to new and unexpected possibilities. They are asking me to see something new and unexpected in something known. Or something I thought I knew. Kerri calls this morsel The Sun Rises In The East. It is under-painting, a layer of Earth Interrupted VII, which may or may not ever be completed. Voyages of discovery are like that. We’ll see.

read Kerri’s blog post on THE SUN RISES IN THE EAST

www.kerrianddavid.com

the sun rises in the east/earth interrupted vii ©️ 2018 david robinson & kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, color, creativity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, discovery, earth interrupted, exploration, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, morsel, seeing, society6.com/davidrobinson, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Feel More [on KS Friday]

Posted on June 8, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’m sure that accountants never sit at their desks and review their accounting of the past 30 years. Lawyers, I suspect, may review a case here and there but I doubt that they ever sit in a room, surrounded by all their cases, and consider them as a body of work. Artists necessarily review their work all the time.

Because of our melange both Kerri and I have been sitting in our studios surrounded by our life’s work, revisiting every era. She listens, pours through old notebooks, tinkers with pieces that never made it to the recording studio. I pull out canvases, flip through old sketchbooks, and portfolios. We compare notes. We share our favorites. We disavow our least favorites (“Someone else painted that and stuck into my stack. That piece is awful!”)

It is much more emotional than you might imagine. Each piece comes thanks to a potent life experience, a funny story, a period of loss, lostness, foundness, utter ful-fill-ment, the vast and empty void. We stare at what we achieved, we face what we aimed for and missed. We stand on the edge of what next calls to be explored.

It is not an intellectual review, a study. It is a feeling pathway, a conscious opening to experience in all its many colors. There is no rational sense to be made in what we do or have done. “Making art” is a dedication to feeling more. It is a love song.

BUT I FEEL MORE on AS SURE AS THE SUN is available on iTunes & CDBaby

PURCHASE THE PHYSICAL CD

read Kerri’s blog post about BUT I FEEL MORE

www.kerrianddavid.com

but I feel more/as sure as the sun ©️ 2002 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Creativity, KS Friday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, creativity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, feeling path, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life path, life review, sense making, society6.com/kerrisherwood, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Move Me [on KS Friday]

Posted on June 1, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

Kerri composes on scraps of paper. Her notes are unintelligible to those of us outside of her mind. Lyrics peppered with mysterious hieroglyphic symbols and magical music notation that skips across multiple napkins and old homework assignments. What’s more amazing to me: she can play perfectly beautiful pieces of music as she deciphers her random-note-trail.I’ve accused her of being like John Nash, the character that Russell Crowe plays in A Beautiful Mind. “You’re not a paranoid schizophrenic are you?” I ask, scrutinizing her for clues.

“I don’t know, I’ll ask myself,” she replies. I am out-gunned at every turn.

Recently she pulled out a plastic sleeve stuffed with wrinkled paper, post-it notes, and random scraps of scribbles and jots. “This is the song They Way You Move Me,” she said.

Amazed. On this KS Friday, take a moment, put down your scraps of paper, and follow Kerri through hers. Give over and let her beautiful song, The Way You Move Me, move you.

THE WAY YOU MOVE ME on the album AS SURE AS THE SUN is available on iTunes & CDBaby

THE WAY YOU MOVE ME gifts and products

tote bags!

read Kerri’s blog post about THE WAY YOU MOVE ME

www.kerrianddavid.com

the way you move me/as sure as the sun ©️ 2002 kerri sherwood

the way you move me/raw lyrics designs ©️ 2018 kerri sherwood & david robinson

Filed under: Art, Creativity, KS Friday, Uncategorized | Tagged: as sure as the sun, composition, creative process, creativity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, KS Friday, society6.com/kerrisherwood, studio melange, the melange, the way you move me | Leave a comment »

Find Your Poetry Tree [on Chicken Marsala Monday]

Posted on May 14, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

I stood before a school board and found myself defending daydreaming. I’d piloted an experiential learning program in the district and the board wanted to ensure my students would be “nose-to-the-grindstone” every moment of every day.

Learning (a creative process) has nothing to do with grindstones. Constant activity, rote exercises and busy-work-for-the-sake-of-busy-work may give the appearance of learning but that’s about it. People learn when in the pursuit of something real and my students were making movies, writing plays or starting businesses. Staring out of the window, I explained, was not only valuable but necessary. I wasn’t making excuses. I had brain science and learning theory to back me up.

There are very good reasons that most “aha moments” happen in the shower, while driving, or, like my students, staring out a window. Inner-space and quiet are necessary ingredients for insight. A good gaze out the window is, in actuality, an inward look, it’s a mental walkabout, a mind-stroll that allows a noisy brain to take a breath and let the logjam of thoughts to relax and flow.

Quinn used to tell me to cultivate my serendipity. He meant that I should open myself to insight, to make myself available to surprises and possibilities, to the utter magic of “where did that idea come from?” Opening yourself requires a good window or, like Chicken, a special poetry tree. On this Chicken Marsala Monday, get your nose off the grindstone, find your poetry tree, and allow the insights to find you.

POETRY TREE gifts and reminders

Read Kerri’s blog post about FIND YOUR POETRY TREE

www.kerrianddavid.com

Filed under: Chicken Marsala Monday, Creativity, Education, Uncategorized | Tagged: aha moments, chicken marsala, Chicken nugget, creativity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, daydreaming, flow, inner peace, inner space, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, learning, mental noise, monkey mind, poetry, poetry tree, serendipity, society6.com/chickenmarsala, studio melange, the melange, window staring | Leave a comment »

Face Your Giant [It’s Flawed Cartoon Wednesday]

Posted on April 11, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

A spot of humor to get you over the hump from studio melange.

choose your giant. stand your ground

“I love the duck!” Kerri said.

“It’s not a duck!” I wrinkled my nose. “It’s the golden goose!”

“It’s a duck,” she said. “And I love it.”

beanstalk FACE YOUR GIANT METAL TRAVEl MUG copy

face your giant but remember to keep hydrated in the process.

I have no real explanation for this odd Flawed Cartoon so don’t ask. I can only offer that I’m generally fascinated by that-thing-in-people that says, “stand your ground” even when the flag they plant will cause them great harm. Smoking, for instance. Insisting, “I’m not creative!” Arguments for stagnation, as in, “But we’ve always done it this way!” “Argue for your limitations,” Richard Bach wrote, “and, sure enough, they are yours.” Imagined giants.

I’m also generally in awe of that-thing-in-people that says “stand your ground” even when faced with a real giant. Remember 1989, Tianamen Square, tanks and the man who stood his ground? March For Our Lives. #MeToo. Real giants come in many forms. So do Jacks.

This Flawed Cartoon cuts both ways.

The only other thing I can offer is this: it’s a golden goose. There is no duck in Jack and the Beanstalk. Read the story.

Kerri just looked over my shoulder and said, “Duck.”