Creativity is something that is born into each one of us. It’s been bred into us so that we will have a chance of surviving. We need creativity to thrive in an educational, business or any social situation.

Some of us feel compelled to use that innate creativity to communicate or express something through the language of art. How each individual does this is different, and yet familiar enough to be relatable on some level.

How much of your heart you pour into your work depends on your purpose or expectation of the piece.

If I want to show you in paint what a particular object or landscape looks like, it will still be painted by my hand and from my perspective, but I will do my best to copy or represent the facts, or at least the facts as I perceive them.

There is more going on in my brain than just the projection of focused light onto my retina. That image joins every other piece of information I have taken in, and so it comes out of the paintbrush with a distinct flavor of me.

You and I could set up easels side by side and render the same scene in paint. Our images will be different.

The advent of photography freed up artists to express something even more personal and more abstract through our art. Painting was no longer necessary for recording the world. We can put as much of ourselves into our expression as we want to, thus communicating not only what we see, but what we feel… what it is to be human.

We can let our minds wander freely through the vast archive of perception that we have accumulated. We can let our hand form marks without expectation and then be surprised by the results.

My academic struggles played a part in my lifelong identity as an artist. Arithmetic was so precise. The sum was right or wrong, and in my case, mostly wrong. I didn’t memorize my times tables, and this made every subsequent foray into math difficult and intimidating.

In art, there was no one right answer, and variation was encouraged. This was uncomfortable for some kids, and I can understand how some with different skills than me would want to know they had gotten it right. For me, art was forgiving and validating.

We’re all different.

I don’t think we need to strive to be unique, making being different our main goal. I mean, being different just for the sake of being different. I want to be understood, to be authentic and genuine.

The way I can be unique in my art is to be as me as I can be. I want to find meaningful analogies to help make sense of my experience as a human and then be relatable in my presentation. Nobody else can create anything from my perspective, and that is what makes me unique.

I don’t have to do anything to keep myself interested in my work, just as I don’t have to convince myself to keep taking one breath after another. Unlike breathing, I don’t need to paint every day. Art is not a chore for me. When things are ready to come out, they do.

Creative expression is not automatic. You learn as you go. Just as the basis for creativity is embedded in us by natural selection, practice and improvisation help us develop our voice. We find what works, and we also discover what does not work for us. This can lead to discouragement and frustration. We need to trust the process. It’s my own expectation of what something should look like that makes me feel discouraged.

I have to remind myself that painting is a process, and learning is a lifelong journey. It’s ugly sometimes and that doesn’t matter.

The steam you get in sauna when you throw water on sauna stove is called löyly. It is believed there is löylynhenki, the spirit of steam living in each sauna providing a decent heat for its users. But you should be careful not to piss off löylynhenki, as it can easily burn off your ears!

These color combinations occur for a number of reasons. What colors of paint do I have in my studio? What color came before it? Did they mix on the palate? Did they mix on the canvas?

In this painting, I have not used any black. That was intentional. As random as the brushstrokes may seem, they were all intentional. Contrived, but with no agenda. No expectation about the composition. I didn’t ask them to look like anything.

I really just wanted that time to play in the paint. To let my mind wander down whatever path it found itself on while my eye streamed the results of what my hand was doing back to my brain.

It was later, when the paint was dry, and the canvas hung on the wall next to my bed, that I started to see forms within the composition. A whippet head… An anglerfish… Faces.

I can’t see them when I have a paintbrush in my hand.

Life is filled with conflict and stress. I’m not complaining, that is just the case. I could distract my mind by watching tv, and sometimes I do that. I wish I could spend whole days in sweatpants and a sleeping bag. When I paint, the distraction is built right in, but the escape is active and even productive.

When I sit in a sauna or a whirlpool tub, everything slows down. If I sit long enough, thoughts and memories rise up like the steam. I am often surprised by what lurks inside me, as I am by the pictures hidden in the paint.

My grandmother was a Finnish immigrant from Helsinki.

A few years ago, I studied mid-century abstract Finnish art, and much of it felt very familiar to me.

I didn’t have to emulate it, because of the Finnish blood coursing through my veins.

Whatever I painted was authentically Finnish.

I live in a cold, northern climate, on the shore of a large body of water. Grammy lived in Maine, and she said the coast of Maine reminded her of Finland. When I saw the north shore of Lake Superior for the first time, it reminded me of Maine. I know that a lot of Finnish people liked this area. I like it best when the crowds of people are gone. That’s my inner Finn. I’m an introvert, but a social one. I love spending time with friends, but it’s when I’m alone that I recharge my battery.

I like to draw all of the curtains, lock the doors, and spend days in seclusion. The constant sound of chatter annoys me. Sometimes I just want everyone to be quiet.

“If someone is talking in a Finnish sauna they are not Finnish.”

3′ x 4′ acrylic on canvas, in progress