Before I went to art school, my father admonished me not to make abstract art.  I think it was because he didn’t understand it.  I didn’t understand it, either.

  When I was in 4th or 5th grade, we took a field trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts.  There was a large canvas by Mark Rothko hanging over the staircase in the museum lobby, and I remember the other kids laughing at it.  A tour guide pointed out that an abstract sculpture was worth just as much as one of the old marble statues.  Our minds were boggled.

At the end of our tour, we went to the gift shop, and I bought several postcards.  All of them were of abstract art.  The other kids couldn’t believe that I had chosen those.

Nonetheless, years later when I got to art school (which was right next to the DIA), I had a kind of mental roadblock that kept me from embracing art that was not representational.  In my mind, a drawing was better, the closer it resembled the subject.  I admired abstract art, but found myself unable to create it.

I think my parents thought it was just throwing paint at a canvas and calling it art.  And I guess you can do that.  Of course you can.

You can express a lot with color or lines, even if they don’t conjure up objects or landscapes.

A friend of mine was in art school when his father died.  After the funeral, he had to do some paintings for a class, but he didn’t feel like painting.  So he told me he painted “nothing”.  Just filled four canvases with paint.

I own two of those paintings, along with several other abstract pieces by friends, and I love them.

I love them for the colors, for the shapes, and for the stories they remind me of. The stories my friends told me about creating the images, and stories my mind tells me when I look at them.

I do a lot of abstract paintings now. Bright colors flow out of my thoughts and work their way down my arm, and out of my hand, through the brush and onto the canvas.

My father also makes beautiful little abstract paintings sometimes. My daughter saw some of my dad’s painted blocks, and said, “Now I see where you get it from!”

“No,” I said, “I was doing this before he was.”

Our paintings are similar.

My grandfather was a painter too, and an art teacher. Something from him was passed on to my father, and from my father to me.

We dip our nets into the collective unconscious and we catch similar things.

I think this is how we are reincarnated. The cells of my ancestors live on in me.

I like to think that my brain cells can inspire, and live on in others through my art.

Or better yet, that we can be mutually inspired and changed by each others’ creativity.

detail

24″ x 36″, acrylic on canvas, 2017

When I first moved to Grand Marais nearly 30 years ago, two natural features fascinated me. Devil’s Kettle and the Witch Tree. We have many rivers and many trees here in the boreal forest, but these two oddities are unique.

I had been painting old growth white pines for a long time, then one day I saw a branch that looked like a fish. I thought I’d try it out. I painted a fish into that branch that hung with its mouth open. There’s a beautiful stand of trees a little way up the Gunflint Trail that I have painted over and over. I’ve gotten to know those individual trees quite well, and when I approach them on the road, they greet me like friends.

As an individual tree, the Witch Tree is even more unique and recognizable. She’s not so tall or easy to find, but is a symbol of survival against the odds. Perseverance in adverse conditions. Sacred to many. Mysterious and inspiring, clinging to rock, she is unlikely. Unlike the fish who come and go, swimming in her shadow, she is steadfast.

I am just one of many artists to interpret this amazing and beautiful cedar.

I’m looking forward to hanging paintings at Coho Cafe in Tofte on April 15. Almost 30 years ago, Chef Judi Barsness asked me to show my paintings in that venue. Now we’ve come full circle. She was the one who contacted me about this current show.

Always supportive, Judi displayed my work at her restaurant in Grand Marais for many years as well.

Thank you to everyone who came out to my house on April 1!

My friend Anne once told me not to feel bad about painting the same subject over and over. She said if you paint it once, one person can have it. If you paint it many times, many people can have one, and that’s how you can become a household name.

Sometimes I feel like I’m doing the same painting again, but that is not true. They evolve subconsciously. I wouldn’t be able to do the same painting twice if I tried.

These fish in trees paintings are hanging in many homes now, and that’s a good feeling.

I was feeling stressed after work this morning. I was so wound up I couldn’t just go to bed. So I went into my studio and painted for an hour or so. It relaxed me and gave me some clarity, or at least calmed my mind enough to go to bed.

Working the night shift takes a toll, even though I love my job. As I said in an interview once, my jobs are things I do, but art is who I am.