life path | The Direction of Intention

The Question Of Orbs [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 8, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” ~ Joseph Campbell

She told me this photograph was for me. My paintings often include orbs. I wasn’t aware of my orb-inclusion until the day many years ago that I showed Jim E. my paintings. He asked, “What’s up with the orbs?” Confused, I examined my own paintings. It was a hysterical moment of self-discovery.

At first I liked to think of the orbs as spirits. Guardians or messengers. I am an intuitive painter so I assigned some Glenda-the-good-witch sensibility to my ever-present orbs. Later, I imagined they represented unhatched possibilities or germinating ideas. I loved the idea that we are surrounded by bubbles of potential. Now, I have no story at all for them. I like them. They are there. They make me happy. They make compositional sense.

Last night we discussed our broken road path to each other. If this or that had changed, would we have found each other? Would we be living entirely different lives? From this vantage point, our meeting was all but impossible. At the time, what seemed like the worst possible thing – life collapsed in both of our stories – nudged us to somehow bump into each other. Two bubbles in a vast universe.

Now, joy is burning out the pain.

Perhaps my orbs are homage to the wonder of bubbles in the universe? A nod to the unanswerable question of my life path – ours or any life path: is it random or is it destiny?

“Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, ‘This is what I need.’ It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment–not discouragement–you will find the strength is there…” ~ Joseph Campbell

read Kerri’s blogpost about ORBS

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Gratitude | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, destiny, fate, guardians, homage, ideas, impossibility, Joseph Campbell, joy, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life path, messengers, orb, possibility, Random, spirits, story, studio melange, the melange | 5 Comments »

Beyond Words [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on May 29, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Sometimes the obvious is hard to write about. A heart path. A heart on the path. My mind jumped to the easiest association: a heart path is a metaphor for a spiritual life. Despite the countless tomes written across cultures and through the ages, including the current river of memes flowing across our screens, a spiritual life is impossible to wrap in words. Yet we have a long and complex history of trying.

I have friends who are Buddhist, friends who are Christian, friends who are Jewish, friends who are Muslim. I’ve spent time with Hindu priests and I’ve been introduced to the Tao. As they say, many paths, one destination. Heart paths, all. It is worth remembering that no single path is better or worse than any other. As Joseph Campbell suggested, religions are vehicles. A ride share.

A spiritual path need not require a deity or a book of rules. As Kerri says, “If it’s not about kindness it’s not about anything.” Kindness is an expression of the heart. Kind-heartedness. Warm-heartedness. Tender-heartedness. A heart path invokes this quality: selflessness. Deities and rulebooks can be twisted, human-made as they are, to serve un-kind, selfish intentions. Stoke divisions. Division is the opposite of a heart path. Kindness is an expression of unity.

A heart is a good symbol for the path because we all have one – every single one of us. Skin color, cultural orientation, systems of belief, sexual identity…do not alter the simple fact: we have hearts in common. Many hearts (plural) reaching for the single shared heart. One heart (singular).

Transcendent.

read Kerri’s blogpost about HEART ON THE PATH

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Language, Metaphor, Transcendence | Tagged: artistry, belief, beliefs, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, division, heart, heart path, Joseph Campbell, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kind hearted, kindness, life path, path, religion, religions, selfless, selflessness, spiritual life, story, studio melange, tender hearted, the melange, unity | Leave a comment »

Consider The Landscape [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on November 23, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“We are a landscape of all we have seen.” Isamu Noguchi

In my landscape of life, there is a mountaintop at sunrise. There is a nurse shark hiding in the coral. There is a boat with orca whales breaking on all sides. There is leap of faith after leap of faith after leap of faith. There are betrayals and loyalty. Lightning strikes and earthquakes. There are stages and audiences. Two times living under martial law. Revelations and reckonings. Leaves rustling. A white dog and a black dog with amber eyes. Fresh baked bread and hot coffee. Visits to the past. Fingers stinging with cold so near to frost bite. Shame and embarrassment. Triumph and encouragement. Near starvation and too-much-food. Friends suddenly appearing from nowhere and friends suddenly disappearing into the same nowhere. There is unbridled hope. There is a wasteland of despair. There is cursing the heavens and genuine thanksgiving. So many empty attempts at being clever. So much reinforcement of the fullness of my ordinary. There are so many yesterdays that blur and wash together, a raging river.

There is one today. A single now.

Certainly there is landscape enough to fill a thousand canvases with childlike play. There is enough to fill a million million pages with wonder. Cicadas and sunsets. The smell of fresh basil. To sculpt with words ideas that may or may not help others see the fullness of their unique landscape and how infinitely conjoined it is with mine.

pax, 24x24IN, mixed media on panel

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE BOWL

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Filed under: DR Thursday, Gratitude, Identity | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, experiences, fullness, hope, ideas, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life path, Noguchi, ordinary, pax, peace, presence, shape, story, studio melange, Thanksgiving, the melange, yearning | Leave a comment »

Labor For Surprise [on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 29, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

I designed the set using a David-Hockey color palette. Rich and vibrant. A gifted scenic artist brought my renderings to life. I was concerned. Sometimes what looks good on paper does not scale well. Sometimes scaling up fulfills the promise. Dreams are that way, too. You can’t possibly know a good idea is genuinely good until you give it a try.

I moved from California to Seattle. When I first arrived in Seattle I took my paintings to many, many galleries hoping to find representation. I was excited to be in a city with a mature art scene. I was ready to scale up my career. The response was unanimous: my paintings were too vibrant. Too much color. As a kindness, one gallery owner suggested that my paintings were appropriate for a California audience but would never sell in Seattle. Apparently the cloudy skies and reputation for rain dampened en masse the local appreciation of color.

I was deflated but undeterred.

After a season or two in Seattle my color palette was noticeably different, toned down. The ubiquitous rain naturally muted my spectrum of color. There’s no telling what will happen when lofty dreams hit the hard work of reality. It’s unpredictable. The labor of surprise. Once I was sufficiently color-muted, everyday, every-single-day for 15 years, I showed paintings in galleries, in coffeehouses, in theatre lobbies, in studios, in pop-up shows…

I left Seattle when I met Kerri. I knew immediately that she was The One. Early on, before I actually moved, as we were driving around town, I wondered if my art-life would survive in this new place. I wondered if it was time for me to scale down. The same rule that applies to scaling up also applies to the opposite direction. It was new territory. My dream had never included the idea of trimming. From this vantage point I can safely say that I had no idea how hard it would be and no idea of the abundant changes – that brought simple abundance – this move would bring.

Yesterday Jen asked, if we had life to live over again, and money wasn’t an option, would we make the same choices. Kerri and I laughed heartily at the money-part. This path has been hard – so far, money hasn’t been an option – but we were unanimous and immediate in our response: I wouldn’t – we wouldn’t – change a thing. This dream was and continues to be a genuinely good idea, regardless of scale, filled to the brim with vibrant color and the hard labor of surprise.

cloud watchers, acrylic on canvas, 20×49.5IN, © circa 2002

My still-as-yet-unfinished-because-I’m debating-the-how-what-and-why-of-my-life-website

read Kerri’s blogpost about PEONY RAIN

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Gratitude | Tagged: abundance, art life, artist's life, artistry, color, cultivate surprise, david hockney, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dreams, good ideas, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life choices, life path, perseverance, scale down, scale up, story, studio melange, surprise, the melange | 2 Comments »

Retrace Your Steps [on KS Friday]

Posted on December 2, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

We completed the first loop and, rather than continue in the same direction as we usually do, we turned and walked the other way, retracing our steps. It was remarkable. Walking in the opposite direction seemed like a different trail altogether.

It is the way of memory. Take a walk backward in life through places you’ve already been. It is a different trail. Often unrecognizable. In fact, with each backward stroll, the path is surprisingly different depending on the reason for retracing your steps.

This is the season for retracing steps. Remembering people and places, tastes and smells. Kerri asked how we celebrated Thanksgiving when I was a boy. We spent the next several hours roaming through our forgotten lands. Some were delicious. Some painful. Some made us laugh.

I’ve been talking with Horatio and emailing with Rob about next steps. Where to go from here. This seems like a well-worn path: sudden job loss. Their advice is clear: do not walk the same path. Do not do the same old thing in the same old way. “My advice is mundane,” said Horatio.

As we set our eyes on a new trail, we also walk old paths in our minds. In order to avoid doing the same old thing -again – we must first see the loop that we’re on. Turning around and walking in the opposite direction seems prudent.

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about STEPS

Filed under: Edges, Metaphor, Seeing | Tagged: artistry, AS IT IS, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, figure it out, job loss, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood as it is, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life path, memory, musician, next steps, remembering, retrace, seeing, solo piano, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Turn To See [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on April 12, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Joseph Campbell said, “None of us lives the life that he/she imagined.” We have an idea, perhaps a plan, a good map, and then, well, life happens. As anyone who’s ever done home repair knows, things rarely go according to the plan. A good life, a life well lived, allows for both the well-laid-plan and the home-repair-rule. Things happen. Plans change. Visions grow. Pipes burst. Pieces don’t fit. Good angels arrive.

Dreams are fluid things. Despite expectations, very few life paths are straight lines.

One of the tenets we taught in The Circle Project was to plan for surprise. Expect the unexpected. There is nothing worse than an inflexible plan. There’s nothing better than a happy accident that alters the course of an idea, the direction of a life.

That we have penicillin in our world is the result of a famous happy accident. Intention met mishap met serendipity. A surprise discovery in a Petri dish in 1928 took years, many more Petri dishes, publications and happy discovery by other scientists who held a similar intention, followed by additional happy accidents to at last become a useful antibiotic available to the public in 1942.

Though I rarely include it in my list of gratitude, I would not be alive today were it not for that accidental mold in the dish and the subsequent scientists who included in their plan time to read journals and follow up on the research they found there. I’ve never come across a life plan that included a bout with life-threatening infection but I’ve heard countless tales of relief when the antibiotic – no longer a surprise – arrived. Surprise meets plan. Plan meets surprise. They are dance partners, not adversaries.

A team can practice, practice, practice, but they cannot know or predict the outcome of the game. It must first be played. And, as any athlete will tell you, the game is only worth playing – or watching – because the outcome is unknown.

Plan for the unknown. Welcome the surprise.

The long view is what we desire before life is lived. Pick a point on the horizon and walk that way.

The long view is something we can only truly see after the fact, when we arrive at a point, and turn to see the surprising path we have traveled.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE LONG VIEW

Filed under: Emergence, Gratitude, Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective, Seeing | Tagged: david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, happy accident, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life path, life plan, long view, map, penicillin, plan, serendipity, surprise, The Circle Project, unknown | Leave a comment »

Appreciate The Garbage [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 27, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

your past copy We saw this phrase on a Baptist church signboard en route to the Des Plaines river trail: your past should not dictate your future.

I read somewhere that we spend the first half of our life stuffing a bag full of garbage and the second half of our life unpacking and sorting through it. If it is true that we must make mistakes in order to learn, then much of what we judge as garbage must also be the necessary ingredient for growth. Context is everything.

When we first met, Kerri introduced me to a song by Rascal Flatts called Bless The Broken Road. Our conversation was a shared soul searching about all things we’d done in the past and labeled as ‘mistakes’. These ‘mistakes’ set off chains of events that led to the really good things in our lives. One of them led to our meeting. “You have to listen to this song,” she said. God bless the broken road.

Forgiveness seems hard to extend to others but almost impossible to extend to ourselves. Mistakes. Garbage. Broken roads. Who really knows where a path leads? Who really knows the impact of any decision or choice? It is easy to look back on a choice and criticize it because it is also easy to forget the pressures-of-the-moment and future-blindness that factor into our choices. Hindsight is not as clear as advertised.

When we were young Roger told me that he didn’t want to have any regrets when he looked back on his life. At the time I agreed. Now, I know that a life void of regret is a life lived on a too narrow spectrum, a protected life. A life free of risk. And, that life, inevitably comes with one single but whopping regret: it wasn’t really lived.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

read Kerri’s blog post about PAST DICTATES

Filed under: Merely A Thought Monday, Navel Gazing, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: broken road, choice, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, forgiveness, garbage, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life path, mistakes, Rascal Flatts, regret, regrets, studio 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.