I love shooting portraits, but I don’t see myself as a portrait photographer. I think I am more of a street photographer or photo journalist. I love to capture slices of life. Real life. Not necessarily people who are dressed up, made up, and posed. I shoot in natural light or living room lamps rather than studio lighting.

Several of my friends don’t like the photos I take of them, even though they like my pictures of other people. They seem to have a preconceived idea of what they should look like, or how they think they look best. I shoot you the way I see you.

Remember the first time you heard your own voice on an audio recording? I do. Like many people, I said Do I really sound like that? Actually, I think I said I don’t sound like that. My brothers assured me that I did.

I think it’s that way with photographs. Sometimes you don’t know what you really look like.

For Amber

I had lunch with my goddaughter today. She and I have both struggled with the thought of what to do next… looking for our next big thing. Maybe all people think that way.

Many years ago, I was painting trees. Old growth white pines, in particular. I hung one on my bedroom wall to look at it for a while, without a paintbrush in my hand. One branch looked like the shape of a fish with its mouth open. I noticed it, the way I often notice inadvertent forms in my paintings.

It went to a show, and came home again. I asked it why it didn’t sell.

This unwitting fish in the branch taunted me until I painted it in there. I liked it. And I painted more fish in the branches of trees.

Some of my friends were dubious.

Why?, they asked.

I answered that this area was built on lumber and fishing.

Einstein’s quote came to me again and again… Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.

The personal meaning for me was that I happen to have a wonderful dyslexic brain. Even though I felt out of place in the world for most of my life (like a fish in a tree), there was a tremendous gift in it. I wasn’t stupid, as I had believed. I was just different.

Over the next several years, I became known as the guy who paints fish in trees. My next big thing. But I didn’t plan it. It just sort of happened.

I think it’s the trying to come up with our next big thing that keeps us from finding it. If we just do what we do, our next big thing will come out. It will find us.

And so when my paintbrushes get fidgety, I pick them up and see what they have to say. When I pick up the moving pen, I make sense of what is in my brain and my fingers.

I begin to analyze myself in a loving, non judgmental way. I sort out the noodles in my head one by one and make sense of them.

I believe that the purpose of art is to express what it means to be a human being. To give form to those thoughts that make us different than a chicken or a cat. And different from each other, too.

I don’t worry about writer’s block, or painter’s block. If I’m not painting, then my mind is digesting something. Just as with our guts, anything that goes in, will eventually come out again. Transformed. Unrecognizable.

So trust yourself. Trust your gut, and your fingers. Your next big thing will manifest itself.

Fall Colors. 10″ x 13″, acrylic on illustration board

I sometimes take the gondola to work. I float over an expanse of maple trees, and look down on the Poplar River. In the fall, the hillsides turn red until brown takes over. The color doesn’t last long, and I love seeing them at their peak as I ascend the mountain.

pysy poissa nurmikolta

The thing that distinguishes me from other artists in my genre is that I can do something nobody else can do. I can paint from my perspective.

I watched a video today where a guy went to Giverny and made a tutorial on Monet’s palate and technique. He did a beautiful painting in the style of Monet. I loved watching the process, and the beautiful picture that resulted. But it’s not a Monet.

I live with the intent to send a message, so yes, I paint with the intent to send a message. Many messages. If I want to tell people to stay off of my lawn, I’d probably write the words “KEEP OFF THE GRASS.” That’s pretty direct. When I’m painting, the messages are not really like that. They require some participation from the viewer. They are not directives. My goal is to connect. To communicate nonverbally. To validate and encourage.

The message?

You matter. What you feel matters. Your joys and your sorrows matter. As I said, you have a unique perspective that only you can communicate. But we all feel happy and sad. We all have strengths and limitations. So your unique experience will resonate with someone else.

We’re just enough alike as humans to understand, and just enough different to be interesting. Or inspiring.

You don’t have to try to be unique. You are already unique.

A dear friend said to me the other day “I’m nothing”.

I was shocked. Not only is she unique, she’s one of the most interesting people I know. I can’t understand how she doesn’t see it. If only she could see herself the way I see her!

I learn about myself when I paint. I’ve often said that painting is meditative for me. It is. Time seems to stop, and while my hand applies paint to a canvas, the fingers of my mind rifle through the file cabinets in my brain. With no effort… no intention, details are pulled from the folders, and I remember that I know something I haven’t accessed for decades.

Sometimes people criticize my art because they don’t understand it. I mean they don’t understand the motivation behind it. Not all art is pretty. It can be ugly and poignant. It can be ugly and beautiful at the same time!

Sometimes they criticize my art in a constructive way that helps me to improve it, and that is a wonderful thing.

Sometimes I criticize my own artwork, or just paint over it.

And sometimes I am hurt by the criticism.

But nothing is going to appeal to everyone. So that’s just something I have to accept. One person criticizes a painting, then another person buys it.

To put your work out there is to invite criticism.

I dip my ladle into the collective unconscious and I bring up something that we share. All of us. The creative impulse that makes a painting, kind of freezes that moment in time. The oil pastel by Anne Cervenka that hangs on my wall, Musa’s painting that hangs over my bed, my painting on your wall. The buried mosaics of Pompeii, and ancient petroglyphs hold messages for any viewer with eyes to see. An expression of beauty, longing, what it means to be human. It doesn’t need interpretation or justification, but those discussions can be a lot of fun and enlighten the conscious mind.

Twenty two years ago, Holly and I were on our way to San Francisco because our daughter’s birth mother had gone into labor.

We had a few hours layover in Las Vegas, so we took a taxi to the Luxor to get something to eat. We called our hotel and found out that Maddee had been born.

We went into a bar to see if we could get glasses of champagne to celebrate, but they didn’t serve champagne by the glass. You had to buy a whole bottle.

So we were standing at a crowded bar, and the tv was on.

You know when you’re in a loud place, and you say something loud to the person next to you, but right at that second the whole place falls silent and everyone can hear you?

Bob Dole was a guest on Crossfire. Their logo was CROSSFIRE in squares, and to me it looked like Wheel Of Fortune.

So in that conversation lull, l said, in a loud voice Bob Dole wants to buy a vowel!. I even had my had up like I was holding a pen.

Maybe you had to be there, but it still makes me laugh.

I think I first knew I was a creative person when I first knew I was a person. I never tried to be creative. I didn’t always see it as a good thing. The creative kids are the kind of annoying kids. The kids hunched over their assignments… those kids who understood the assignment… got annoyed at the goofy kid. And the teacher who assigned the work did not have patience for someone with a completely different learning style! I was more work for them. I was a behavior problem. Best to remove me from the area until I learned my lesson. And that is how I learned nothing. From them. What I did learn was how to escape. How to give up. How to compensate. That’s where creativity comes in.

Inspiration comes from almost everywhere. Latent memories surface after being dormant for a lifetime. They present themselves and I examine how a comment from my kindergarten teacher played a part in shaping who I am today.

I think flowers are pretty, but I’m not inspired by them.

I paint in acrylics because they are opaque, they dry quickly and they are not too expensive.

If I struggle with an idea, I just don’t do it. The images are lined up in my arm, waiting to be extruded… funneled out my fingers (my arm, as I have said, is the GI tract of my brain).

My biggest obstacle to creativity is expectation. I just want to do my thing. I don’t want to transcribe your idea of a good picture. I tried that. My painting didn’t look like what my friend had in his mind. Imagine that. I hated it and he hated it.

So I don’t really do commissions.

When I am creating something, I feel like a kitten playing. I’m mesmerized by the colorful thing, and I don’t notice that I knocked your cup over or pushed the pen onto the floor.

That’s not true. My kitten doesn’t think, he just acts. Everything is a toy to him. I’m thinking the whole time I paint. I’m not necessarily thinking about painting, though.

When I paint, I feel relaxed. Free. I feel like myself.

Not that I always like what I produce. If I don’t like it, I paint over it.

While I hope people like my paintings, I really want to be remembered for being generous, open, and for helping you see, accept, express and love your own soul.

vettä sillan alla

I stood on the bridge over South Brule River the other day. I had been out to lunch with a friend, and we saw a lot of beautiful things on the drive.

We kept stopping to enjoy the details along the roadside. I was leaning over the side of the bridge trying to take a picture of my reflection which was faceted by the moving surface of the water. It made me think of a book I had read years ago called WHEN THINGS FALL APART.

My own image fell apart in the reflection, but the pieces didn’t go far. They kept coming together and falling apart again. That’s what life is like. It’s fluid. We have expectations, both short term and long term. Things don’t always go the way we expected them to.

This morning I was talking to a coworker about how we walk into the future backwards, only seeing where we’ve been, and never really knowing what’s next. She shared the beautiful allegory of Plato’s Cave with me.

All of a sudden, my hat fell off, and dropped into the river. I hadn’t seen that coming.

I went to the other side of the bridge and waited for it to go sailing downstream without me, but it didn’t appear. So I climbed down the embankment and found my cap moored along the riverbank.

All those moments that slide past our view from behind turn from unexpected to water under the bridge. Nothing stays. The scenery always changes, and moment to moment, we change with it.

hattuni putosi joelle

I keep telling you that the words and the pictures come from the same place. That is really true. The process is also the same. It’s like driving a car. Sometimes I am going to the store to buy bread. Because I’ve run out of bread, and I need more bread. Other times, a friend and I will get in the car and go for a drive. We don’t have a particular destination in mind. We just go out and see what we come across. I usually bring my camera and am often surprised at the photos that come out.

There are times when I pick up the pen because I need to complete a particular assignment. A school paper, a cover letter, a home study questionnaire, a nursing note. I pretty much know in advance what I am going to write. Other times, I pick up the pen and just start writing. When it is done, I am often surprised at what came out.

Sometimes I pick up the paint brush and say I am going to paint this tree. Or I have an idea to paint a lake scape where the clouds look like cats. I have a picture in my mind of what the painting will look like.

Other times, I just grab a color and start painting. I choose another color, and another, building up layers of paint. I just play like that for a while, with no expectation. Sometimes I am really surprised by what comes out.

That kind of exploration… That kind of play is where I discover new techniques and ideas. If I think they are successful, I incorporate them into my more deliberate painting practice.

I’m not always running errands. Sometimes I find a puddle and just splash in it for a while.

Sinulla ei ole mitään vikaa

Punishment never worked on me. I was punished by many people over the decades of my childhood. Misinformed people who thought they were doing good in their self-righteousness when they were actually damaging children like me. I don’t have warm or happy thoughts about the army of disciplinarians in my past. They were not my friends.

I don’t remember much nurturing outside of the home. School was a place where I had to be on guard. I knew I wasn’t good enough to please any teachers or school administrators, so I just went into survival mode, and waited for the last bell that would set me free for the evening.

At church, I was judged and warned. I was constantly told I was not good enough and had to change. I had to keep a list of my failures and my faults, so that I could beg for forgiveness later. I was taught not to feel good about myself, and that all the people outside of the church were on their way to hell and wanted to take me with them. I learned those lessons well.

But I was also able to unlearn them.

People comment on the fact that I am friends with my kids. I think that is a wonderful thing. I’ve heard people say your kids don’t need you to be a friend. They need you to be a parent. To discipline them and set limits for them.

You can be both a parent and a friend. They don’t need to fear you to learn from you. You don’t have to be serious or stoic all the time. You can protect, provide and teach your kids and enjoy them at the same time! You can play and love and teach them to express all of their emotions by recognizing and accepting all of yours.

Older people are not better than younger people. They’re not smarter. They don’t know everything. Anyone and everyone can be your teacher. No matter who you are. No matter how powerful or respected you think you are.

Everyone is different, so everyone has something to teach you.

Learning disability? That’s not a fault. Not a fault of yours, anyway. I call them teaching disabilities. There is nothing wrong with you. Mental challenges? We all have those. Behavioral problems? That’s communication. There is nothing wrong with you.

There is nothing wrong with you.

There is nothing wrong with you.