finger paint | The Direction of Intention

Use Your Fingers [on DR Thursday]

Posted on November 3, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

They call them life lessons because they cycle back again and again. Each successive cycle peels off another layer and reveals a new simplicity. Currently, I am having another layer peeled.

My layer is a renewed appreciation and deeper understanding of a famous Picasso quote: “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” I think I may be shedding some dedicated self-importance and a thick-headed notion of what I ought to be. What I should have been.

I am surrounded by paintings of my own making. They are serious stuff! They are meant to move people and mountains. Some make me smile. Most make me knit my brow. They are generally absent of fun.

I’ve taken a vacation from my serious pursuit and thank goodness! In the meantime, I’m drawing cartoons. And, most importantly, I am painting rocks. We are painting rocks. No thought. No necessity. Just because we can. It is the most fun I’ve had in years.

It is the fun, the complete abandonment of taking-myself-too-seriously that may bring me back to art-as-play. Fun at my easel.

I have fingers so there may or may not be brushes involved.

read Kerri’s blogpost about FISH!

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday | Tagged: artistry, at the door, cartoonists, cartoons, chicken marsala, childlike, creativity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, ease, finger paint, flawed cartoon, fun, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life lessons, painting rocks, Picasso, play, smack-dab., story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Fail At The Box [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 23, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Among Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements is this gem: do the best that you can.

Through the lens of the Occident, those folks on earth oriented to the idea that their nature is bad and needs taming, the Agreement is a statement of self-forgiveness. Do the best that you can. It’s a good bit of advice when everything on earth seems to come with a measuring stick.

Don Miguel is Toltec so his Four Agreements are rooted in an entirely different understanding of nature. To do the best that you can has little to do with performance or achievement. There’s no judge sitting on the high bench scrutinizing goodness or badness. There’s no book with black marks next to your name. This Agreement is about setting an intention. The other Agreements are about speaking with impeccability, making no assumptions, taking nothing personally. In other words, it’s never about you; you can’t possibly know the reasons why; your words matter. So, do the best that you can.

Circumstances are uncontrollable. Sometimes people are mean. Sometimes the tornado comes through and blows your house away. It’s not personal. You probably can’t do anything to change the tornado and even less to change other people. So, change yourself. Or, better, be yourself. Attend to your story and free yourself from the illusion of living under grand judgment or any of a number of other control fantasies. Do the best that you can.

Lately, I’m pondering the too-tight-image-boxes we squeeze into and try, but can never quite, fulfill. The impossible image; a too tight expectation. The Pleaser. The One Who Knows What Is Right. The Peacekeeper. The Strong One. A step away from the box-expectation, the-role-I-think-I-must-fulfill, is a giant leap into happiness. Inside the box it is virtually impossible to do the best that you can. Boxes are alive with assumptions (what I must do, who I must be); buzzing hives of judgment, and, when in a box, speaking truth is frowned upon, so editing and/or silence rules the day. Just try doing your best when living in a too tight box!

Fear and anger fill boxes. That is, after all, the purpose of the box, the fruit of the impossible mission.

Here’s my advice to myself: fail at the box. Cut it up and put it into the recycle bin. Then, free of the too-tight judgments, it’s possible to set mistake-free intentions. Life as finger painting: do the best that you can.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SOME DAYS

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Creativity, Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor, Uncategorized | Tagged: advice, artistry, boxes, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, direction of intention, don miguel ruiz, fail, finger paint, Four Agreements, free, intention, judgment, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, make mistakes, measurement, mistakes, nature, occident, orient, peacekeeper, pleaser, self love, story, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Be Grand! [on saturday morning smack-dab.]

Posted on May 7, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Little pot roasts are popping up everywhere! Adorable bundles of baby smell and killer smiles. In our pal-group, the babies are having babies. And it’s transforming us into something a little more grand.

Not having had children of my own (I am the proud papa of my two given-children), I’ve spent my life as the weird uncle. I taught my toddler niece to say, “I want another margarita!” and my sister was not pleased. I’ve never successfully changed a diaper but I’ve had riotous fun with many crawling creatives, banging pots and breaking crayons. Uncles, like grandparents, are there to break the rules.

Of this I am certain: Kerri dreams of heaping love and presents on her future grand-pot-roasts; I can’t wait to finger paint and then meet after the mess at the Cheerio bar. Green fingers and snacks! A sure sign that life is grand.

read Kerri’s blogpost on SNACK TIME!

[happy mother’s day!]