Filed under: Art, Gratitude, The Direction of Intention, Uncategorized | Tagged: david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Gratitude, kerrianddavid.com, painting sale, society6.com/davidrobinson, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »
No Words. Just Thanks.
Posted on April 22, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
KS Friday
Posted on March 23, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
On this KS Friday from studio melange, a moment to breathe and listen.
A few hours ago we loaded several large canvases into our car. They were from Duke Kruse’s studio. They are canvas stretched and prepared by Duke. They are blank, the canvas he never got to use before he passed. He was a gifted painter, a brilliant artist. I never met Duke, but his son John [we call him 20] is most dear to me, a brother. 20 thought Duke would want me to have his canvas. I am moved to tears to be the recipient of this legacy.
When DeMarcus stopped painting, in the middle 90’s of his years, he gave me his brushes and his paint box. I drew all of Chicken Marsala, all of our Flawed Cartoons, all of Beaky’s books with nibs and handles that DeMarcus left for me. They are my treasures and make each image, each drawing that much more special.
Somehow I was fortunate enough to be the recipient of Tom’s story, the carrier of his legacy. Every day of my life I recognize in my bones that I carry a bit of Quinn’s vast wisdom in my marrow, his generous gift to me.
I am rich in Legacy. This sparkling river, this quietly moving piece from Kerri’s first album, always carries me directly to thoughts of my mentors and friends, to a sunset from the porch on the ranch, a room lined with books, yellow pads and red felt-tip pens, a studio with just a hint of turpentine and mineral spirits in the air.
LEGACY from the album RELEASED FROM THE HEART (track 12) iTunes
LEGACY from RELEASED FROM THE HEART (track 12) CDBaby
PURCHASE THE PHYSICAL CD: RELEASED FROM THE HEART
NEW! KS DESIGNS on society6.com
read Kerri’s thoughts on Legacy
kerrianddavid.com
LEGACY from RELEASED FROM THE HEART ©️ 1995 kerri sherwood
Filed under: Gratitude, KS Friday, Uncategorized | Tagged: Beaky's Books, Chicken Marsala Monday, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Duke Kruse, generosity, Gratitude, inheritance, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, legacy, legacy from released from the heart, released from the heart, society6.com/kerrisherwood, solo piano, the melange, treasures | Leave a comment »
KS Friday
Posted on February 23, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
In this age of brevity, tweets, freeways, fast tracks, efficiency and ubiquitous worship at the alter of time-is-money, I find this piece of music to be heart-full and hopeful. It reminds me of the simple truth in this life: the important stuff lives in the fields beyond the achievements and striving. It’s A Long Story is beautiful and evokes a profound paradox: each moment is a long story – especially if I choose to live IN it rather than rush to pass THROUGH it.
I listened to this album long before I met Kerri in person. I listened over and over again to this track, It’s A Long Story, and knew we were kindred. It asks you to stop and listen. It asks you to take time, to surrender any nagging efficiency, cost cutting race through life and sit in your moment. It’s a warm bath in the simple appreciation of living. It has made me smile and sometimes served as the soundtrack to my weeping. It always serves as a siren call into the present moment. That’s the heart of the artist’s gift and Kerri, my wife is a remarkable artist. On this KS Friday, hear her call from the melange, and fall into your Long Story.
ITS A LONG STORY from the album THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY (track 1) iTunes
www.kerrisherwood.com – buy the album
read Kerri’s thoughts about IT’S A LONG STORY
IT’S A LONG STORY from THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY ©️ 2000 kerri sherwood
Filed under: Awakening, KS Friday, Uncategorized | Tagged: appreciating life, appreciation, artist, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Gratitude, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life, living your moment, long story, moment, musician, paradox, piano, piano artist, presence, story, storyteller, the melange, yamaha artist | Leave a comment »
See The Present
Posted on June 10, 2016 by davidrobinsoncreative
From the stacks we pulled out every painting and considered it. A buyer, those rare and colorful birds that occasionally fly in unannounced, interested in my work generally, wanted a piece. He wanted a selection to choose from. The studio became a hodgepodge gallery organized around possibilities for purchase. I have digital images of every piece but our enthusiasm propelled us into the studio. It had been a long time since I’d spent time looking at the full body of my work.
“This one goes upstairs!” Kerri announced.
“Why?”
“It belongs in the Held-In-Grace series,” she replied.
The Held-In-Grace paintings are my newest series, each completed within the last 5 months. The painting she held was six years old. I told her it was old (obviously) and couldn’t possibly belong in a new series.”It belongs and it’s going upstairs,” she said, giving me ‘that look,’ saying only, “I think it is called PRAY NOW.” I know when I am bested. The old painting with a new name went upstairs to join the current series.
In its former life the painting was named JOHN’S SECRET. John framed all of my paintings during the Seattle years. He was one of those rare people that had no secrets. John was industrious, generous, practical, direct, and artistic. He was a collision of contradictions. He saved my artistic bacon more than once, showing up at just the right moment with just the right tool or just the right sentiment. He was as close to pure as a human can be. No pretense. No mask. No power game or hidden agenda. Just John. He was a rare ally, a consistent angel. I lost touch with him when I moved to the shores of Lake Michigan.
I named the painting JOHN’S SECRET to tease him. To tease me. “Someone’s whispering in your ear!” I quipped. “I’ll never tell,” he replied as he helped me fit the painting into the frame.
It is oddly appropriate that, at this time of my life, JOHN’S SECRET would be renamed PRAY NOW and join the HELD IN GRACE series. It has been too long since I spent time looking at my full body of work. I saw old pieces with new eyes. Some of the paintings deserve to step back into the light, to go upstairs and be seen. I found them surprisingly beautiful, something I would not have been able to admit a few short years ago.
The buyer, it turns out, was a scam. He was not interested in my work at all. It took two days of negotiations for me to catch on; I am sometimes slow in the uptake. Buyers, those rare birds, it turns out, are truly rare. For a few moments I wanted to cry (only for the amount of time it took me to drink a scotch – “Pa told me to pour you this,” Kerri said when she saw the crush of scam-realization hit my heart and show up in my face). I took my scotch and my wound into the studio to restock the paintings and realized that the scammer had done me an enormous favor. He helped me look at the long-body of my work. He helped me see with new eyes the beauty of my previous life’s work, something that I had not before been able to see. And, he helped me recognize the great good fortune that surrounds me in my present life. He helped JOHN’S SECRET find a path back into the light of day, a new life, renamed – or perhaps, at long last, finding its true identity.
Filed under: Art, Creativity, Gratitude, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: art, creativity, grace, Gratitude, paintings, scams | Leave a comment »
Stand In It
Posted on March 11, 2016 by davidrobinsoncreative
a detail from a recent painting
A surprise package came in the mail. It was a gift from David, my artist’s artist. He sends me things to feed my artist soul, to stir my pot or help me sort out my dilemmas. This gift is more timely than most; it is especially relevant for me now. It is a book of photographs and essays by Walter Kaufmann called Time Is An Artist. I’ve barely cracked the cover and already know it carries the wind that will fill my becalmed life-ship.
This is a quote from the first essay: We always live at the limits, but we are rarely aware of it.
I woke up this morning awash with gratitude for a man who stood in line behind me at an airport ticket counter over 30 years ago. I was returning from Europe. I had a hundred dollars and some lose change in my pocket. I was exhausted. I’d flown from London and landed in a blizzard. My connecting flight from D.C. to Denver was cancelled. Because I was traveling on a cheap open-ended student ticket, the cancelled flight meant I was stuck with no way home. I didn’t know what to do and was too tired to sort it out. I was desperate and lost in my desperation. That’s when the man tapped me on the shoulder. He was a guy in a rumpled business suit. That’s all I remember about him. He was also trying to get home. He’d just heard someone mention an airline offering a cheap flight to Denver. It was $89.00 ($100 with tax). I ran for the ticket counter and snagged one of the few remaining tickets.
That’s it. That’s what I remember about this man who tapped me on the shoulder. To him it was probably a little thing. To me it was enormous. I needed hope beyond desperation. I was investing in a story of limitless problems and was met with a moment of generosity.
It seems that I am in a life course, a graduate school for detachment. Last night P-Tom shared a quote that was important to him when he was doing his chaplaincy in a hospital: Don’t’ just do something, stand there (a reversal of the known quote). Stand there. Amidst the grief and the loss and the mess, sometimes it is essential to do nothing but offer presence. The man at the airport gave me his presence. Beyond his situation he was listening to my struggle.
Detach from your story and the gift will be gratitude. What rolls through our minds is nothing more or less than a story. Eckhart Tolle tells us the story is a force that pulls us out of the Now. Carlos Castaneda writes that Don Juan taught him 3 steps on the warrior’s path: Detach. Make a choice. Own the choice. One of the primary reasons people meditate is to quiet the mind. In the quiet it is possible to see the story as just that, a story. Detachment, in this sense, is not disengagement from life or cold aloofness from reality. It is the doorway to life. Stand in it and not the story of it.
Gratitude lives in the Now. Where else?
another detail from another painting. kerri says this one looks like gratitude
The man at the airport was on my mind because I have learned in this life-course that gratitude is best served in thimbles: the taste of the pear, the sun on your face. The man tapping your shoulder, “Hey, I just heard….” I thanked him before running but the real gratitude came later. Gratitude came again this morning because I was telling stories of the good angels who’ve populated my path.
Real gratitude for this life lived perpetually on the edge is often lost when the expectation-bar is set too high. To be grateful for your life – your whole life – is… an abstraction. It requires a story that pulls you away from this bite. It is a bucket too big. Savoring is a slow affair, available in the smallest taste, right now.
Filed under: Art, Awakening, Edges, Gratitude, Perspective, Seeing, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: choice, detachment, edges, generosity, good angels, Gratitude, limits, presence, present, savoring, story, Walter Kaufmann | Leave a comment »
Know Your Stuff
Posted on February 24, 2016 by davidrobinsoncreative
my latest: Held In Grace: Rest Now
This a note of gratitude. Unashamed and unabashed.
Yesterday was our third annual trip to Cedarburg for Winterfest. It is one of my favorite adventures of the year with some of my favorite people. The temperatures were unseasonably warm, in the 50’s, so there was no snow and the river ran freely. The ice sculptors lining the streets tried to carve but soon abandoned their too-rapidly-melting blocks of ice. I stood with my back to a brick wall and drank in the sun.
Like the rest of the crowd, we wandered in and out of the many boutiques and shops, ate brats, sipped coffee, watched the sweet -small-town-parade and cheered at the bed races, an event that usually takes place on the frozen river but this day was held on a side street. The team with the best wheels won.
The shops, like shops in every town dependent on tourism, are chocked full of trinkets, greeting cards, clothes, and tchotchkes galore. Some of the shops are so stuffed with stuff that shoppers routinely flee to the streets to avoid imminent suffocation. I am generally crowd-averse so I hovered near the door and watched the games that emerged when the rules of personal space also fled to the streets. I delighted in the dance of strangers-in-too-tight-aisles bumping bellies, stepping on toes, laughing and blushing at unintentional nose touches and unfortunate hand placements.
In one of the shops I found displayed among the stuff a book entitled, Less Stuff, More Life by Amy Maryon. Ironies abound! I laughed heartily and was surprised when I found the same book in the very next shop we entered. So, I made a game of finding how many shops stuffed with stuff carried the book about collecting less stuff. The count: I found it in every shop we entered with the single exception of the antique store. It’s okay to load up on old stuff.
Each time I found the book I assigned it as a trigger for me to turn and appreciate the amazing people sharing the day with me: Dan and Gay, Sandy, Noelle, Daena, Jay and Charlie. Kerri above all. I also made it a game of giving gratitude for the riches of my life: 20, Linda and Jim, Russ and Mary Kay, Marilyn, Arnie, my Jims, …I could go on and on. I am the recipient of infinite kindness and support, love and friendship. This is the stuff of my life – as it is the stuff of life for us all. I suspect (the author) message is that the stuff in our closets obscures the real stuff of life. The shoes and houses and dish towels are not in themselves negative, they are, in fact, nothing at all. They are stuff. And, in the midst of the stuff, if we can see the forest through the trees, is our family and friends and community. There are people in our lives that we will never meet who make it all richer, better (for instance, I’d like to hug the human that first made a cup of coffee). They are the people we read about in the newspaper who donate time to make playgrounds, volunteer at the library or to man the local firehouse. There is the woman in the shop in Cedarburg that prays that we will buy something so she can pay her mortgage and feed her children.
Filed under: Family, Gratitude, Love, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: community, family, focus, friendship, grace, Gratitude, life, meaning, purpose, stuff | Leave a comment »
There Is Wisdom In Dancing
Posted on August 19, 2015 by davidrobinsoncreative
TODAY’S FEATURED THOUGHT FOR HUMANS
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.
Filed under: Art, Awakening, Body, Business, Creativity, Education, Family, Gratitude, Identity, Intuition, Love, Metaphor, Perspective, Possibility, Power, Prints for Humans, Seeing, Story, Surprises, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: body, business, dance, dancing, education, Gratitude, heart, kindness, life, living, mindfulness, mindset, relationship, slow-dance, spirituality, tango, waltz | Leave a comment »
Delight In The Question
Posted on March 2, 2015 by davidrobinsoncreative
a new canvas, stretched and ready for gesso.
So what is next?
There is a sweet void that follows in the wake of every project and this particular void is vaster than most (don’t you love the phrase, “particular void?”). This project, The Lost Boy, was and continues to be more layered than any other. It pulls on emotional and spiritual roots that have not been available in other performances and so the post-show disorientation is mighty.
I’ve come to appreciate my time in the void. It is the time of reflection. It is the time of rest. It is the time of long walks. It is the time of questions finally answered that invite bigger questions. I’ve learned that disorientation is necessary for reorientation and reorientation never comes as an answer but always comes in the form of a question: so, what’s next?
Yesterday I tacked a large canvas to the wall. It is now covered with layers of Gesso and is ready for paint. I delight in this phase of preparation. It is akin to the anticipation of meeting with an old friend; the conversation will be rich and far reaching. I also bought a new sketchbook and have set myself the task of filling it within the month. Many years ago, while sitting in another void, I was staying with my pals Duncan and Liz while directing a play. Liz, familiar with voids, insisted that, after rehearsals, I do a hundred paintings before I sleep. Each night, tired from a long day of rehearsal, Liz sat with me as I did one hundred paintings, quick gestures with brush and ink, paper fluttering to the floor. We laughed and I felt renewed. After ten paintings en route to a hundred, the notion of judgment and too-much-thinking goes out the window. The joy of the action takes precedence over the illusion of a finished product.
I’ve written often of the lessons Saul-the-tai-chi master taught me. Focus on the field of possibility and not on the opponent. In other words, offer no resistance to those things that appear as obstacles. Sit with gratitude in the void. Paint a hundred paintings before you sleep. Delight in the question.
Filed under: Art, Creativity, Possibility, The Direction of Intention | Tagged: art, Gratitude, possibility, question, theatre | Leave a comment »
Dance With Sherry
Posted on November 18, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
A painting from the archives. I call it ‘Revelry!’
Sherry was killed in a car wreck many years ago. It was ironic. She had a severe food allergy and was pronounced dead more times than she could count. Every time she went out to eat she rolled the dice. And, because she had been back and forth over that dark line so many times, she never took a day (or a meal) for granted. Death walked with her so she was awash in the appreciation of life. Sherry never missed an opportunity to laugh or dance or shock people. She was a one-person party and her enthusiasm was infectious.
She was a true friend and a colleague and took the plunge with me when I wanted to start a communications academy (teaching core curriculum through experiential processes; with students we made movies, plays, performance art pieces, poetry slams and ran businesses. It was not only a blast but hugely successful. We created things as opposed to studied things. The only trouble I ever had was getting the students to go home). Initially, the academy was a risk but she was quick to throw herself into the chaos and brought her friend Linda kicking and screaming with her. Both were extraordinary English teachers looking for a better way to teach. We were like adventurers in the wilds of education, blowing up old models and exploring new territory. It would be impossible to do today; innovators are nailed to the floor by the standardized master-tests that they must serve.
The last time I saw her she said, “This is the last time you’ll ever see me!” She had a Cheshire grin and I protested, “Why? Are you planning on avoiding me!” She leaned in so no one else might hear and said, “I doubt I’ll be alive when you come back.” I told her not to be stupid but, as usual, she was right. She also asked me to not come back for her funeral. “Let this be our goodbye,” she said.
Kerri and I have been cleaning out the house, purging years and years of boxes, clothes, and…stuff. We are making space for new things. Each load that goes out the door is matched by an opportunity or insight that flows in. Not only are we cleaning out but we are reaching back in time and visiting old friends and extraordinary moments. More than once we’ve sat to share photographs or letters, “This is what I used to look like,” or, “Remember I told you about my friend…., this is us 20 years ago.” For some reason, Sherry has been with me today. I have no photos of her and no letters but I have terrific memories. I’ve been meditating on joy all day and she was the embodiment of joy. She was the queen of mischief and bold leaps of faith. “Life is never sure!” she’d giggle. “You only have today so dance it or get off the floor!” she’d shout, punching me, her Cheshire grin breaking across her face before erupting in gales of laughter.
Go here for fine art prints (and other stuff) of my paintings.
Filed under: Gratitude, Heroes, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: dance, education, Gratitude, joy, life, vitality | Leave a comment »
Feel The Day
Posted on October 27, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
My favorite face of exuberance.
And so, the sun! These crisp, bright fall days bring pause. They make us slow down and pay attention to the small things, the sensual things: the smell of coffee, the sweet taste of butter on warm toast, the gentle music of the leaves, the blue sky vibrant through the luminous yellow leaves.
These are the days of easy appreciation; gratitude stands close-by. With senses heightened and deep inner quiet rising to the surface comes the simple acknowledgment that this day will never come again. It is precious, like all days, but on these days-of-the-senses, when reason, explaining, and justification take a break, the obvious becomes apparent. Every moment of life is this rich, precious. Wisdom comes through the senses, when tight reason takes a break. This life is passing. This life is bigger than any one of us. It is as vast as a human heart.
Turning my face to the autumn sun, I close my eyes and with great relish listen to the exuberant life celebration of Tripper Dog-Dog-Dog, barking because he can, digging holes to bury treasure, racing around the yard for no other reason than it feels really good.
Or, go here to buy fine art prints of my paintings
Filed under: Gratitude, Love, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: appreciation, Gratitude, heart, relationship, senses, wisdom | Leave a comment »
The Direction of Intention 