The technical term is “hyper-focus.” I am gifted at becoming absorbed in my tasks. I have a knack for stepping out of time. Especially when my task is an art project. A painting. A cartoon.
Kerri will tell you that my hyper-focus is less a gift and more a maddening quirk or slightly annoying defect of character. She quips that, when I am painting, the house could blow away and I wouldn’t notice.
She’s exaggerating, of course. I would definitely notice if the house blew away. Eventually.
During the past weeks I have rectified a wrong that I did to myself. A few years ago, after several water disruptions in my basement studio, with the space in disarray and too full of stuff, I had a fit of “what-am-I-going-to-do-with-all-of-these-paintings. With no thought to the future, I rolled several of my canvases. There are many, many paintings so I made multiple heavy rolls. And then I stacked them. The stacking was my crime. The weight of the top rolls pressed those on the bottom. Left too long and the canvas warps; the paint cracks.
I feel as if I am emerging from a dream. The past. Dried flowers in springtime.
At breakfast on Monday, Liam asked if I had been painting. I blinked, not ashamed of my reply but mostly shocked at the truth of it. “I just finished a painting,” I said, “the first I’ve completed in three years.” Three years ago I rolled my paintings to keep them out of the water – to get them out of the way. Broken wrists, lost jobs, pandemic, an uncanny series of water issues…A pause. Or, I feared, a finish?
I carefully unrolled the paintings. Flattened the waves in the first canvas roll with books. I built successive layers of flat paintings, using the weight that caused the problem to my advantage. Opening the rolls was like taking a walk back through my life. Two of the rolls were paintings from the early 1990’s. A self portrait in orange on an Oregon beach. I recognized the paintings but had to reach to find the painter. Dried flowers. A dream. The past.
Kerri wrangled carpet tubes from a big box store. We cut them and carefully rerolled the paintings, now with a solid center so they cannot be smashed. We devised a strategy to stand the tubes, protected from any future water problem.
Emerging from the dream. Perfect timing. It is the season of renewal. Spring.
We are, like the rest of the nation, astounded at the weekly escalation of prices. It’s not just food; the cost of heating our home jumped 20% last month. We piled on layers of clothes through the winter so our usage actually went down. Use less. Costs more. There’s something wrong with that equation.
When you seek jobs in the non-profit sector, as I have recently been doing, you get an overview of desperation. Elders making choices between food and medication. Families with parents working as hard as they can and still not able to afford the inflated rents and cost of food. Each day I read celebratory news about the thriving markets while assisted living facilities evict seniors on Medicaid. What a sad dichotomy we’ve become. Not surprising, the real cost to us as a nation has very little to do with money.
The question is rhetorical because the answers are all around us: What if it all keeps going up?
I did a stupid thing. A few years ago I rolled several of my canvases and stacked the many heavy rolls. Stacking them was my crime. The weight crushed the bottom rolls, potentially leaving ripples in the paintings. I know better. I’m unrolling each, one roll at a time, weighting the flat canvas so any potential wave is pressed. So far there is no damage.
I have opened three rolls. I have three more rolls to go. The opened rolls remain flat on the ground with the next roll layered on top. A new type of stack. Sedimentary paintings. Each layer provides weight to help flatten the previous roll. It’s slow going. I am being careful. I am treating the canvas – my paintings – with the respect that I should have afforded them long ago.
We took a walk on the road when we were up north. It was snowing and the world became snow-quiet. As without, so within. I became snow-quiet. The gang walked ahead as Kerri took a photo of the silent woods. I turned my face to the snow and felt the sting of each flake. Sometimes, when deep in the snow-quiet, the life-canvas is blank and affords the opportunity to discover the world anew; snow on my face for the first time. This earth is heartbreakingly beautiful.
Unrolling each roll of paintings is like turning my face to the falling snow. It makes me quiet. I am seeing paintings – my paintings – that I have not seen for a few years. I am afforded the opportunity to discover my world anew. I’m finding, as I carefully weight them, hoping the ripples are not permanent, that I have new eyes and new appreciation for my life and work. Unrolling the rolls, caring for the pieces, evokes peace in me.
I painted each of these paintings for the same reason. Standing before my easel quiets my mind and tunes me into something bigger than my tiny frets and future worries. It connects me – and that is whole point of the arts. It connects us. Unites us.
With each roll revealed, just as with each new painting, I become clear, if only for a moment. Like a walk through the woods on a snowy day.
[Peace is one of my favorites of Kerri’s compositions]
Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora
I awoke alarmed and sat up. Dogga was not sleeping at the foot of the bed! He’s always there! Where was he? And then I remembered. We were “up north” for a few days. Dogga was safe at home with 20. I lay awake feeling deeply his absence. Disoriented.
A few days later we were home. Because of my up-north-late-night-moment-of-bewilderment, I was hyper-aware of how “right” our world feels when we are all together. I adore our daily patterns and rituals. Dogga’s enthusiasm, his Aussie quirks inform every move we make.
Sometimes we think we hear BabyCat thumping around upstairs or awake feeling as if he just jumped onto the bed – we call it “the raft.” When we are all together on the raft, there is nothing better on earth.
It’s such a simple and yet profound thing. Presence. With it, all is right in the world.
There is a lesson I receive again and again but – for obvious reasons – the penny refuses to drop. The learning hits me and slides off my Teflon brainpan. The lesson is this: Listen, don’t solve. Especially in the middle of the night. Particularly in the middle of the night. My job is to nod, nothing more.
The reason for my late night ineptitude? At the risk of reinforcing a stereotype, I am a male. I am hardwired to solve. When I’m tired I have no editor. Okay, when I’m rested, I have no editor so imagine my predicament in the dark hours.
It’s shocking. Since so much of my career was built on my great capacity to listen, I am sometimes astounded at how quickly I begin my lobby for a solution.
Dogga looks at me and shakes his head. I know what he’s thinking. “He’ll never learn.” It’s true. I can say with the utmost confidence that last night’s lesson is already forgotten and I am fully prepared to learn it again tonight.
We often walk the same trail. You’d think we’d get bored but we like to see how it changes through different seasons and at different times of the day. It’s never the same. It’s like an old friend.
In the same way, on our way home, we stop and visit a tree in a farmer’s field. It stands in isolation, alluring on the horizon. It is both the same and never the same. A guardian in the fog. The geese land in the surrounding field and gather close to its protective arms. It is an ancient beacon in the cold icy snow. It’s silhouette at sunset has moved me to tears. We have a relationship with it. It’s like an old friend.
Our old friends remind us to open our eyes. To pay attention. To make no assumptions. They are never the same and, I suppose, the same is true of us, too. A different season. A different time of day. Through cold and sun, fog and rain, if we stop to see or slow down enough to notice, time reveals us as we are. Ever-changing. Beautiful.
Yesterday, as a birthday present, Kerri took me to the Milwaukee Museum of Art. I haven’t been to a gallery or art museum since COVID and she could tell I was running on empty. In the past, we’d spend hours sitting in front of Richard Diebenkorn’s paintings. The museum has two of his Ocean Park series and I never tire of my conversation with them.
Adjacent to Diebenkorn is the site of my greatest artistic victory: it’s where, years ago, I introduced Kerri to Ellsworth Kelly. At first she rejected him outright. Now, she joins me in my delight of his vibrant love of color. I smiled to the core of my being yesterday when she took my hand and with great anticipation led me to the gallery room where Ellsworth’s paintings live. Someday we will make a pilgrimage to Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin at the Blanchard Museum of Art. It is a sacred space of color and light.
I didn’t know how much I needed to hang out with the masters. I knew I needed to refill my artistic-cup but wasn’t aware of how much I longed to step out of the race-for-tomorrow and sit in quiet consultation with the artist-dedication-to-now. Richard, Ellsworth, Georgia, Pablo and the rest. Today, I feel as if I can breathe…
Posted on February 25, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
I was satisfied with the second pair of frames I tried. For me, the whole process of frame selection took less than two minutes. Kerri? Not so much. She went through every frame in the store, twice. And then every frame in another store. And another. And another. She had a specific idea and none of the choices aligned with the frames-she-imagined or fulfilled the criteria on her list.
This is a crucial distinction and perhaps a key to happiness! I had no idea so everything was a viable option. She had a specific idea and an exacting criteria so the field of options was limited from the outset. The key to happiness: have no ideas. Ditch the criteria.
In the end, after weeks of searching and trying on frames, it came down to this: everyone in the shop voted. And, I mean everyone: the optometrist, the assistants, The manager, the other customers, and some random person who came into the shop to see what all the fuss was about. The vote was unanimous. The selection was made.
Her ideal remains unfulfilled but I am happy to report that after much searching the frames have landed.
Posted on February 18, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
“You know you’re getting older when…” you delude yourself into thinking life used to be simpler. Lately, I am a festival of delusion. Or, perhaps, I’m a keen observer of social trends! Yes. That must be it. I can’t possibly be like other people!
Case-in-point: most people have muses or angels that sit on their shoulders. I have a “Savvy.” My Savvy tells me things like this: we live in app mentality: the notion that we can personalize our “screens” with an infinite selection of choices is post-modern bubble madness. Choices for the sake of choices but not necessarily meaningful choices. Personal preference run amok!
Of course, my Savvy might be taking advantage of my weakening eyesight. Just like angels that perch on shoulders, I have two Savvies. A Good one. And a Savvy with a sense-of-humor dedicated to making me the butt of every joke. Actually, the good Savvy has probably already retired and is sunning herself in Boca Grande. Bad Savvy is having too much fun to retire. I can’t really tell if Good Savvy is still around because I can’t see like I used to.
In addition to seeing Good Savvy, I mostly want to see the traffic signs at night. That’s it. How many choices are required to achieve my simple desire?
The Direction of Intention 