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.