trillium | The Direction of Intention

Swim Upstream [on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 18, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Today we travel. Family, like salmon swimming upstream to a place of origin. We’ll meet at the farmhouse. We’ll eat dinner. We’ll discuss what to do tomorrow at the inurnment. I think he mostly would have enjoyed our gathering together. Food and laughter. That is the ritual he would have appreciated.

The Great White Trillium produces “a single showy white flower atop a whorl of three leaves.” The flower opens late spring to early summer. Right now. They are abundant on our trail.

Whorl: a pattern of spirals or concentric circles.

Five years ago we strolled with him through the cemetery. He told stories of his friends. We will, I am certain, tell stories about him.

Kerri and I walked our trail on the ten-year-anniversary of our first meeting. We talked about how we’ve changed in the decade since I stepped off the plane. “I’m more connected to the impermanence,” she said. I nodded my head. Me, too.

Impermanence. A short season. Generations, a whorl. Patterns. Concentric circles. We tell stories and then we join the story.

Today we travel, like salmon swimming upstream.

rest now, 24×24″, mixed media (sold)

read Kerri’s blogpost about GREAT WHITE TRILLIUM

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rest now © circa 2016 david robinson

Filed under: DR Thursday, Family, Gratitude, Love, Story | Tagged: artistry, ceremony, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, family, generations, impermanence, inurnment, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, pattern, ritual, seasons, spiral, story, studio melange, the melange, trillium | Leave a comment »

Sit In The Quiet [on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 2, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Years ago I directed a production of Into The Woods and I wanted a set design alive with David Hockney colors. The production was gorgeous. The set the designer created was a vibrant fantasyland with the dark undertones wrought by dinosaur-size-too-big foliage. Tiny people in an oversized children’s pop-up book.

If I were going to direct the musical again today, I’d approach it through a different lens. I wouldn’t place it in the vivid palette of fantasyland; this world we journey through is fantastic just as it is. When Kerri and I walk, I am sometimes stunned to silence by the shapes and patterns and pops of color. Ominous and serene. Alive.

For reasons that have nothing to do with reason, I started using imagined leaf shapes, plant-symbols in my paintings. I know when I someday return to my easel, the plant shapes will be present – perhaps even dominant. There is no end to the eye-popping variations. Our walks in nature have me “seeing” again.

A few years ago, Brad and I talked about the deep backstory of why an artist creates. Of course, there’s not a single driving reason – it changes over time as we change over time. I know many artists who’ve set down their brushes, singers who stopped singing. They satisfied their backstory. They channel their creative juices into other forms. Based on the evidence, these days I am a writer. Lately, I spend more time drawing cartoons than painting paintings. And yet, I still think of myself as a painter.

In the past, a step away from the easel was acknowledging a fallow season, letting my batteries recharge. This time, the step away is different. My reasons are spinning, changing. The younger me-artist was finding a place to transform pain into presence. The middle-age-artist-me entered the studio because it was the only place on earth that made sense. It was a sanctuary. A quiet place.

Each day I walk down the stairs and stand for a few moments with the canvas on my easel. It’s a stranger. I hear my easel whisper, “Not yet. Soon.” I am content with soon. I feel as if I am in an extended meditation, borrowing a tradition from Japanese masters, sitting in the quiet until there is no space between me and the brush, no space between me and the motion. No space between me and the shape, the pop of color, the infinite variance of pattern. No space between me and the surprise-of-what-will-happen. No space between me and the story.

read Kerri’s blogpost about TRILLIUM

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Identity, Surprises, Uncategorized | Tagged: artist, artistry, backstory, color, david hockney, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fallow, Into The Woods, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, meditation, nature, nature symbols, new story, painter, recharge, sanctuary, seeing, set design, shapes, story, studio, studio melange, symbols, the melange, trillium, writer | Leave a comment »

Watch For Turtles [on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 19, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The art of living… is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.” ~ Alan Watts

The ferns have returned. Last week they were sharp tendrils poking through the leaves and earth; little green aliens. A mere seven days later, they are over three feet tall, fern-flags unfurling.

Driving to our trail we saw a turtle crossing the road. Kerri whipped a u-turn and I jumped out of the car, picked it up, expedited its journey, moving it from the pavement to the grass. There’s something special about the turtles. Throughout March and April, while walking on our trail, we’d cross the bridge over the Des Plaines River, and look for the turtles’ return. The turtle in the road was our first sighting of the season. Later, on the bridge over the river, we saw a dozen. “They’re back!” she said and smiled.

Lately we’re given to walking the same trail. We’ve seen it change through several seasons. We followed our loop last week and I swear, this week, it’s an entirely different trail. The trees are flowering. The trillium are showing their purple.

I used to wonder how Emily Dickinson thrived looking at the same garden for years and years. How did she write such beautiful poetry with such a small window to the world? Now I know that her world was enormous and my question was too small.

“Hope is the thing with feathers…”

read Kerri’s blogpost about FERNS