Appreciate The Glee [on KS Friday]

My “word-of-the-day” is bedight. Adorned. It seems most appropriate that this adverb popped in my box on this day of Forsythia. The trail was bedight in Forsythia. A sudden explosion of vibrant yellow.

I always look forward to the first Forsythia sighting. It’s the day Kerri dances in delight, chanting, “They’re back! They’re back!” Her relationship with Forsythia reaches into her childhood and has deep love-roots. My association is more recent: it’s the flower that makes Kerri dance. She runs to the vibrant petals to take a close-up. I stand back and appreciate the glee.

Dogga acts as if we are Forsythia. When we return home from errands – even if we’ve only been gone a few minutes – he jumps vertically at the backdoor, so excited is he to see us. Sometimes I like to go on errands just so I can come home to such a glorious welcome. Who doesn’t want to be greeted with out-of-control enthusiasm!

Yesterday, after a particularly arduous slog through the day, Kerri sat on my lap and declared, “We are successful at nothing!” We burst into laughter. Zero. Nil. Nada. Zip. Bupkis. Nought. Naught. And Zilch. And, into that vast nothing, we pour our good laughter and heart until our nada-cup runneth over.

She did not say that we are unsuccessful. Our particular form of success, apparently, is no-thing. Like Glee. Or enthusiasm. Or music. Or beauty. They are hard to wrap your fingers around. They are even harder to assign concrete monetary value. What is our work worth? What – exactly – is our work? Beyond no-thing?

Yesterday I asked Arnie the to ponder the same question I’ve asked many of my wise-eyes pals: why would people support us? Financially? Beyond caring for us or liking us (trust me, we are wildly abundant in love and friendship), why would someone – anyone who doesn’t know us – support our work? What do we bring of value to the community? For us it’s confusing. Approximately 1,500,000 people listen to Kerri’s music every year through streaming services and she receives nearly-nada. Our blogs and cartoon have reached people in over 80 countries. We love to write together. We love to share what we create. Is there concrete value to what we offer? No-thing? If so, what is it called? What could it be? What shape is graspable? We are sitting on the mountain so we cannot see it. What are we missing?

Mostly, we hope to bedight the life-trail – yours and ours – with the vibrant yellow that lives beyond words and evokes spontaneous dancing. Mostly, if it doesn’t make you dance, we hope it helps you stand back and, like me, appreciate the glee.

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes or streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about FORSYTHIA

the way home/this part of the journey © 1998 kerri sherwood

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Dance In Timelessness [on DR Thursday]

“We cannot struggle to be present. We can only discover that we are present.” ~ Declan Donnellan

The struggle to reach across the divide and grasp hands with the one that you love. It is a universal story. Yearning requires an obstacle to ignite the story.

I painted this for Kerri when we were attempting to bridge the divide. I lived in Washington. She lived in Wisconsin. During a visit, sitting in Adirondack chairs in her front yard, sipping wine and listening to music, we discovered that we were present. We danced in timelessness.

Obstacles become surmountable when love is on the other side of the abyss. We moved mountains and then dealt with the consequences.

It’s a rule that an artist should never tell an audience what a painting means, should never rob a viewer of their response, interpretation, and story of a painting. Sometimes it’s alright to break a rule. I painted this painting for Kerri. It’s about reaching for love across the divide, discovering the present, and the promise of dancing our way through the obstacles.

read Kerri’s blog post about DANCING IN THE FRONT YARD

dancing in the front yard ©️ 2013 david robinson

Read The Image [on DR Thursday]

“I paint the way some people write an autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages from my diary.” ~Pablo Picasso

Kerri and I love to dance. This painting was inspired by one of our spontaneous backyard dances. We don’t know how to do the tango but that has never stopped us from making it up.

When I was much younger, my little brother told me that my studio was one of the darkest places he’d ever been. I didn’t see it at the time but now, looking at my few remaining early paintings, I can’t deny it. Painting, for me, is the log book of a spiritual quest and, like all spiritual quests, the real work is in retrieving the lost pieces and making a greater whole, walking into the wound and transforming it, stepping firmly into the realm of the possible (and becoming it) instead of being transfixed on the monster obstacle.

What once seemed so complex now looks so simple. What once looked so bleak and impossible is now practical, immediate, and infinitely rich. I am lucky. I delight that my diary these days is filled with dances and quiet appreciation.

 

 

read Kerri’s blog post about TANGO WITH ME

 

slow dance party cropped website box copy

tango with me ©️ 2018 david robinson & kerri sherwood

Make Them Visible [on DR Thursday]

AndThenTheyDanced copy

rough sketch (detail): and then they danced

When I first met Kerri she had two Adirondack chairs in the front yard. We spent many summer evenings in those chairs, sipping wine, talking through the sunset. One evening, she brought out her ipod and speaker. We listened to music while we chatted and then a song came up that inspired us to dance. We danced that song and then the next and the next. Soon, she was playing DJ. We wiggled and roared through her rowdy picks and lightly stepped through the slow songs. The first painting I did for her is about that evening. It’s called Dancing In The Front Yard.

This summer I have been empty. I left the studio in early June knowing there was nothing left. It was time to let the cup refill. Over the summer I’ve often visited the studio. I sat in my chair in the dark and felt the place. I’ve shuffled paintings around, reviewed my life’s work and wondered, as I always do in the empty times, if I’ve painted my last painting, if the deep well will ever replenish.

The other day, as always happens, I was passing through my studio en route to the tool room and something stopped me. The empty canvas propped against the easel shouted, “Look at me!” And I did. Turning on the lights I saw them, the dancers, the dancers in the front yard, and I laughed. Dancers. Of course. What a great welcome back; a celebration. A dance. Our dance. Like a thirsty man crawling to an oasis,  I slowly entered the space, picked up the charcoal, and made my dancers visible.”Welcome back,” they whispered, as I dusted off my hands and reached for my brushes.

 

Danced phase 2

a process shot for Skip, step 2: underpainting

 

read Kerri’s blog post about AND THEN THEY DANCED

(Lydia! I remembered two days in a row! Progress?)

Dance [It’s Two Artists Tuesday]

From studio melange a touch of goodness for your Tuesday.

There is wisdom in dancing copy 3

Had you attended our wedding you would have found yourself dancing. Even if you where a committed dance-a-phobe, your limbs would have over ruled your noggin and that deep river of wiggling that flows through us all would have broken through your protective surface layer and you’d have gyrated and twirled. You would have had no choice. The reason is simple. We call her Linda.

Linda is a muse of dance. A maker of enthusiastic merriment. She understands the world through movement. She understands that everything is in constant motion. The earth is moving, dancing. It IS dance and she dances with it. Academics would call her kinesthetic. Invite Linda to even the most stodgy of gatherings and soon everyone will be swaying en route to a raucous Irish folk dance. She knows how to help others dance with earth, too.

There is wisdom in dancing and it is this: it is only possible to dance WITH others – and deep down everyone wants to dance. And, in the merry motion of common movement comes laughter, surprise, and heaps of generosity. From studio melange on this Two Artists Tuesday, we offer what Linda knows: sometimes wisdom looks a lot like dancing.

 

 

THERE IS WISDOM IN DANCING – products we design are sold at society6.com

THIS dance product box jpeg copy

read Kerri’s blog post about WISDOM IN DANCING

www.kerrianddavid.com

there is wisdom in dancing ©️ 2016 david robinson & kerri sherwood

Love To Laugh

photo-1

my bride on our wedding day.

Today marks our one month anniversary. Kerri and I were married one month ago at 11:11am. There are two things that probably best define our wedding: 1) the very first thing we bought for use in our reception was a wiffle ball set and a kickball. It’s taken me a long time to learn that ‘sacred’ and ‘fun’ are essential to each other. Love without laughter is empty, indeed, and I cannot now imagine anything more sacred than love. We wanted to laugh and we wanted our guests to laugh with us.

There is, I’ve learned, a very good reason that the Hopi include tricksters in their important rites. They know that laughter lets the god in. It is a paradox. If you take the god too seriously you will inhibit your relationship with it. You will abstract yourself from it. You will abstract yourself from what is most essential. Laughter is a great facilitator of relationship. Friends laugh together. Kerri often talks about the Amish quiltmakers building a flaw into their quilts. The flaw allows the grace to come in. The laughter, the fun, plunks relationship squarely in the center of the sacred. It makes it real. It makes it relevant. It makes it personal (the three most oft used words to describe our wedding: personal, real, relevant).

To that end, 2) of the wedding week, Jim said it best, “You do know how to throw a great litter of parties.” Truer words were never spoken. We threw 5 consecutive parties in 5 consecutive days, each growing in size and scope. We wanted the people we love to have ample opportunity to meet, talk, and grow to love each other. It took a litter of parties, multiple touches, multiple opportunities, to sow our new garden. More than once Kerri and I watched as the circles of our lives crossed and recrossed, a new tapestry of friendships and stories emerging. Linda taught folks Irish dances on our back patio. Jim and Jim met and played a spontaneous mini-concert. It was gorgeous and spontaneous and rich, rich, rich in laughter (see #1).

This morning Kerri sat with coffee in bed and talked about our wedding (“Can you believe it’s been a month?”). We told stories and compared notes. We laughed. “My one regret,” Kerri said, “was that we never played kickball! I wanted to play kickball!” It’s true. The wiffle ball set and kickball never made it to the beach. There was dancing, so much dancing. The hula hoops even found their way to the dance floor (the bride had four going at one point). So, the kickball remains unrequited. However, the plan for our first anniversary is now set: October 10, 2016, a game of kickball on the beach. An after party of wiffle ball will follow with any and all comers. It will be casual, like the wedding. No need to bring anything. Simply come prepared to laugh.

There Is Wisdom In Dancing

TODAY’S FEATURED THOUGHT FOR HUMANS

There is wisdom in dancing

To restate an old notion: knowledge is not wisdom. And, often times, our reliance on knowledge blinds us to wisdom (for instance, passing a test has little or nothing to do with learning). My mentors taught me that the toughest thing in life to master is relationship. The reason: relationship is at the heart of everything we do whether we acknowledge it or not. Life IS a relationship. Education, business, art, spirituality, leadership, management, self love, economics, agriculture, kindness, gratitude… are all relationship skills. Wisdom is found in the fields beyond your thinking. Get onto the floor of life and dance.

TO GET TODAY’S FEATURED THOUGHT FOR HUMANS, GO HERE.