As an artist, I’m always thinking about what I will create next. Those blank canvases don’t fill themselves. I have themes that I return to again and again. At times they begin to feel tired… overdone. Yet each time I paint a tree, it grows differently out the tip of my brush. I couldn’t paint the same thing twice if I tried. A forest of fir trees is not redundant. A stand of white pines isn’t tedious with its repetition. A crowd of people is not made up of clones.

Still. Sometimes I paint fish into the branches. No two fish are the same. The message is still fresh for me. If I paint one picture of fish swimming amongst the boughs, one person can have it and hang it on their wall. If I do it several times, several people can have one. 

You don’t have to have one. You don’t have to like them. 

It might interest you to know that a fish in a tree is a symbol for dyslexia.

You might find that you have risen above the expectations anyone had had for you. 

You might find yourself feeling out of place at times. 

These are all true of me, so I express these experiences and more in my art. 

Is it about something?  Or does it exist entirely on its own?

When I don’t know what to say, I might just apply paint that bursts forth refusing to commit to any representational object or being. It escapes as paint, laughing from the surface on my easel. It laughs at me, and after catching its breath, says “look what you’ve done!  I don’t look like a tree, or a fish!  I’m paint!  I’m just a color, just a shape!”

Its friend hears the declaration, and follows out the same way… down my arm, through my fingers, and out the end of the brush. 

“There you are!” The first one says, “Come lay by me!”

Everyone is free, the brushstroke and the artist. 

In the end, they tell me something. They bring with them some forgotten story, some unintentional detail that darted too close to the current, and came out. Came out where I could see it, and then I get to laugh at them… or with them. 

This impulsive action is comfortable for me. I see beauty, or at least interest, all around me, often where I least expect it. 

Lately, I’ve been photographing garbage. Litter. These were items that served a purpose. Someone manufactured them for a reason. Someone else agreed with the reason enough to purchase the item. When it was no longer of use, it found its way to the side of the curb. By the time I noticed it, its edges were buried by dirt or frost, its surface had taken on the texture of asphalt. These multimedia pieces tell me stories, or sing in unison with the stories already inside me. I document them in photographs and realize that the whole world is an art gallery if we only look. If we only see. 

I laugh again because the stories are often funny. The art form is sad. 

I will take a bag to the street and take the show down, realizing that another exhibition will soon take its place.