Someone recently asked me about my affinity with the subject of trees.

First of all, I live in the boreal forest where I am surrounded by trees. The Norway pine, or red pine is the state tree of Minnesota, and the white pine is the state tree of Michigan, the state where I was born.

I think the white pines are king of the forest here, especially the old growth individuals. Each tree has its own personality, the way each person does. Earthlings. We’re all living inhabitants of this fragile planet, and I try to capture the uniqueness of each one. But as an artist, I also want to bring a sense of whimsy to the images.

When my daughter was born, I planted fir trees around my house. Those saplings now tower over my home, dominating the place I live. When her son was born, I planted more trees, creating my own private forest in town. These are trees that truly represent people that I love.

If I were to think of selling my house, leaving the trees would be the thing that would make me the most sad. But children grow up and find their own life in this world, as they should. And the trees grow tall and strong, no longer needing me to protect them like when they were the size of a twig.

So once again, it is a lesson in letting go.

I’m learning to let go of my kids. And to detach from stuff. The way I let go of my paintings. The way we will all let go of our own lives one day.

When I write fiction, the details of my own life automatically show up in the story. It’s the same way with paintings, just in a different medium.

We go through so many transitions in life. Some are happy, and there are some we would rather not experience at all. But that is life. It feels like a string of isolated situations, but it’s really a fluid stream of highs and lows. Darks and lights.

Recently some of my friends transitioned right out of their bodies. It’s an inevitable sadness we must embrace as we continue to ride the peaks and valleys of our own daily transitions.

Our brains evolve with each new scenario.

I meant to write about the ebb and flow of stuff. Objects. Possessions that sparkle and promise, only to eventually become clutter that frustrates me.

Imagine living with only what we need. That is what I’m striving for. Everything I need and only what I need or love.

And where does that leave art? I need art. I love art. Art is communication and expression. Art is also objects… stuff. Like all relationships, my relationship with art takes work. Passion and dedication. I must be willing to change and grow.

And later, I see how the sadness and joy, the resentments and forgiveness make their way from my spirit to my brain, from the paint to the canvas. Unintentionally. That’s all very introspective.

When another person sees, relates and is inspired, that is the true purpose.

My brother drew this picture of me when I was in high school. I had caught a red snapper on the beach one night in Liberia. He was about 10.

Maddee used to sit at the top of the stairs and watch me paint. After a while, she’d giggle because I didn’t know she was there. When I looked up, she would break into a full belly laugh. Later on, she painted with me.

Creativity, I think, is the basis of all art, but it’s also the basis of all expression. Whether I’m writing or painting, acting, doing anything, even having a conversation with somebody, the creative urge comes from the same place. The only difference is that the medium changes.

A lot of inspiration, or whatever is behind the art, comes from things like dreams or inspiration that I see all around me every day.

I have different jobs that I do. My jobs are things that I do, but art is what I am. It goes to the core of me. It’s not something that I’m doing because someone expects it of me. It’s something that I truly do for myself.

There was a time when I was first showing my paintings in Grand Marais, and people kind of forget this, but my work was very dark. It was a lot of black and white. If there was color, it was usually blood red. There was a big change that happened when my daughter was born. I stopped painting because I was home taking care of her. When I picked up the brush again, it just came out in bright color. So I think you bring what’s called for, or what you’ve got in you. What comes out of you has to be in you in the first place, so as we go through life, we change… evolve in a way, as we learn more and get more experiences. And then all those things can be incorporated into what we then express.

When it comes to subjects, yeah, there are certain things that I do over and over again. It’s really difficult not to be inspired by the scenic beauty that surrounds us. In particular, the old growth white pines that we see as we’re going up the Gunflint Trail or different places… Those are such incredible earthlings. I think of trees as individuals. I did a stand of white pines, and there were about five trees in the painting. I called it “Five Brothers.” Well, I happen to be one of five brothers. And then there was a companion piece to it that was two trees. Though I didn’t title it that way, I kind of thought of it like my parents, so my whole family was depicted as trees. The trees have a stability to them. When I look out at the water, it’s always changing. I’ve always lived near water, and fish.

I was born in Detroit, and you’re never far from the Great Lakes in MIchigan. I grew up in Liberia, right on the ocean, and then I ended up here. My daughter is from Palau, which is completely surrounded by water, so there’s that kind of stuff.

When I was probably about eight years old, I had a dream. We lived outside of Detroit on a farm. I had a dream that I walked out into the driveway and there was a muddy puddle in the gravel driveway. I saw something moving in the water, so I went and got a net, and I netted a beautiful, long finned, white goldfish out of this muddy puddle, and put it in a jar in my window. That image from that dream has stuck with me my whole life.

Goldfish are such a common thing. They’re like a dime store trinket, but each one of them is an individual life, and there are so many interesting things about goldfish. So I eventually had a goldfish pond in my yard. I used to sit out there with a cup of coffee, and all the goldfish would run and hide under rocks and things. The longer I sat there with my journal or my coffee, they would gradually start to feel more comfortable, and eventually would be eating out of my hand.

I thought that’s the way creativity is. When you’re running through life, going from this to that, and all the things you have to do, the day kind of gets away from you and there’s not enough time to do everything. That’s not the time that the creative thoughts and expression come. It’s when you sit still and allow them to come out that they do. So you can call it creativity. I think that’s spirituality, too.

Van Gogh is someone that I’ve always kind of looked to for the heaviness of brush strokes and the intensity of color. I like a painting to look like a painting. It can be a painting of a landscape, but I like to see the brushstrokes, see the process, and see all that in there. Because, every painting that pretends to be something, a landscape or any representational scene or object, is an illusion. Our mind sees a three dimensional world on a two dimensional plane. It’s not a scene of the Gunflint Pines, it’s paint on a surface. To me, good painting is not necessarily about getting every line just right and getting the shape right, and getting everything perfect, like reporting the news in a photograph. When you tap into something inside you and say “beyond this incredible scene that I’m looking at, that I want to share with you, I want to bring something of me into this.” And I’m doing it with paint, so here’s some paint. Sometimes people look at my work and they say “what’s that?”, and I say “It’s paint.”

I often compare painting to dreaming or breathing. It’s not 100% effortless, but it’s just something that I have always done, and will always do. As long as I’m here in this body, I’ll paint. And if I lose the physical ability to paint, I’ll paint in my mind. I’ll still create those images.

My Dad recently sent me 14 of my grandfather’s drawings. They are crayon on something like newsprint. I’ve ordered a 2017 wall calendar featuring them. It’s nice to have something more to remind me of him.

My go-to medium is acrylic paint on canvas or wood. Once in a while on paper or other painting surfaces. But acrylic paint. It dries quickly, it’s bright, it’s rather forgiving, it’s non toxic, and it just works for me. A lot of people don’t like painting in acrylic because they say it dries too quickly, as opposed to oils where you have a long work time with it, but even with acrylic paint, I keep a fan by my easel and I’m often using a blow dryer or fan to make that acrylic paint dry faster. Because I paint very fast, and I want that paint to dry much quicker than it wants to.

Q: I want to know first how many talents you have.

A: How many talents I have? Well, I have only one talent, and that is communication. So it doesn’t really matter what medium I’m using. Whether I’m writing, or painting, or acting… Speaking in public. It all is communication. And I’m a nurse. Nursing is really so much about communication. It’s listening and responding. And that is what art is. My paintings are a story, whether that story is apparent when you look at it or not. Sometimes I’m not even aware of what the story is until afterwards when I’m interpreting it, or even just figuring it out for myself.