visible | The Direction of Intention

Make It Visible [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on May 16, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“I believe that the very process of looking can make a thing beautiful.” ~ David Hockney

Sometimes I look at a blank canvas and see a composition. My job is to follow the image. To make it visible.

Sometimes I have an idea and I bring it to the canvas. My job is to explore the idea. To make it visible.

It’s a chicken-and-the-egg conundrum. What comes first? When I look at the peony do I see beauty or do I bring beauty to what I see? Is beauty a decision?

“Good-God!” I hear Kerri’s inner monologue-commentary on my too-ponderous questions. “Get out of your head! Smell the peonies!”

I wish I could. What happens when it’s not a peony that I see but my neighbor? Or someone whose worship is strange to me? Or someone with a different opinion?

Sometimes I look at a blank canvas. Sometimes I have an idea that I bring to it. Sometimes my job is to follow the image. Sometimes my job is to explore the idea.

The tricky part of language is that the biases are unseen. For instance, in English, the emphasis falls on the noun: me. Canvas. It implies the two are separate. Distinct. It obscures the relationship between. Connectivity is relegated to the basement, a lower status or obscured to the point of nonexistence. It fosters a philosophical orientation of…”it happens to me.”

Connectivity, once seen, once understood, requires us to recognize our responsibility for what we see. Our participation in the dance of creating what we see. In what we bring to “it”. What, exactly, do we wish to make visible?

read Kerri’s blogpost about the PEONY

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Language, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, beauty, composition, culture, david hockney, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, ideas, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, noun, orientation, responsibility, separation, story, studio melange, the art of seeing, the melange, verb, visibility, visible | 1 Comment »

Look Out [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on April 12, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Perhaps the most useful and profound lesson I’ve learned happened under the water. I was doing my first night dive. I was scared. I was not yet a confident diver. As we descended the world became inky black. All I could see was where I pointed my light.

It was that simple. I can see where I point my light. That’s it. And, more to the point, I choose where I point my light. I have the capacity to choose what I see. I can…and have…chosen to focus on hardship and lack. I can…and have…chosen to focus on what I love. On any given day my focus bounces full spectrum between complaint and appreciation. And then I remember: it’s my light, where do I want to aim it?

There’s a second aspect of the lesson. My focus is a beam. My light is not all encompassing. Each of us looks at life through a soda straw. None of us has the big picture. That’s why the commons is so important. In order to know what to do, we need to bring our many perspectives together to approximate something close to a full picture. Rather than fight about disparate points of view – who is right – it’s more useful to try and assemble all of those differing views, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, into a bigger picture. No one wins when the pieces refuse to interlink.

With two broken wrists the cello became impossible to play. It has sat in her studio, the case unopened, since her fall over two years ago. I remember the day we bought it. We were early in our relationship, not yet married. I knew she was having cello dreams. We went to the music store for some other purpose, I can’t remember. The cello was sitting in the corner. She sat. She began to play. It was a perfect fit. And, although we could not afford it, we also could not leave it behind. It was a perfect fit.

Our lives these past two years have been a descent into dark water. We’ve worked hard to shine our light at our good fortune in a dark and inky landscape. As we make our way back to the surface, we are cleaning out. Taking stock. “The cello needs to be played,” she said, deciding to sell it. “I’ll never be able to play it, now.” She took photographs of her cello. Sent out a message through the network.

At the end of the day she showed me the photo. Edges. The view from inside the empty cello case, looking out. A slice of the world visible outside the case.

What’s “out there” is rarely clear. We see a small slice. It tickles our curiosity. The cello dream moves on making space for…? Who knows? We can’t see that far. In the meantime, we keep our eyes and hearts uplifted as we slowly kick our way back to the surface.

read Kerri’s blogpost about EDGES