These little abstracts have been a part of my creative practice for about 17 years.  They are spontaneous, and carry no expectation or pressure.  They are just bursts of color, lines and shapes.  I usually do them before I go to bed.  I have stacks of them that I keep in baskets.  Sometimes I look through them they same way I look through my box of photographs. Sometimes I see something in them that I hadn’t noticed before.  A form or story… a theme or emotion…. They are a moment of my life documented on paper.  The way they come about is not contrived.  They just spill out in a technique that I don’t employ in more intentional paintings.  They teach me things not only about how mark making tools act or interact, but about the subconscious things inside me that want to be expressed.

My friend Cheralee Dillon gave me permission to use her lyrics in my painting titles. Here’s one.

This little painting is called “Katsoen länteen (Looking west)”, partly because it reminds me of the view looking west from Grand Marais. I lived in Grand Marais for 35 years, and moved away one year ago this month. A lot of people don’t realize that Highway 61 runs east/west through Grand Marais, because we think of Duluth being south and Thunder Bay being north. In looking west, I moved west to the Iron Range. As much as I loved Grand Marais, and as difficult as it was for me to leave, this was a great move for me, and I’m so glad I did it!

I bought a copy of Prince Caspian from a thrift store yesterday. The binding had failed, so it’s basically a bunch of loose pages. That’s exactly how I wanted it, so I could incorporate them into artwork.

It’s comforting to realize that I am a part of the universe, made of the same stuff as everything else.  As a human being, my mind plays tricks on me, and I begin to feel that I am some unique entity forging through this life alone.  I strive to make good decisions, or at least to not make destructive choices.

Wanting to make a good impression is not a helpful approach.  It’s not helpful in life in general, or in my art.  I’m thinking it makes much more sense to relax and just be unapologetically me.  If I try to be someone or something I am not, the truth is bound to come out eventually.  A drawing or painting does not need to be perfect, or pretty to show to the world.  There is value in being vulnerable.  While I’ve hinted at the fact that we are not unique entities roaming the planet, we are each individual expressions of the thing.

I’ve mentioned at least a few times, that I didn’t come into the universe.  I came out of it, like a wave coming out of the sea.  I say it again, because I heard a song as I was driving in my car today.  The song starts “You rise like a wave in the ocean, and you fall gently back to the sea.”  I never realized before that this illustrates birth and death.  Death is inevitable for anyone who is born, so why should that be sad?  When we sit on a beach watching the waves come rolling in, we don’t have to be sad when a wave goes down, or ends by lapping onto the sand, and then retreats again.  It’s the rise and fall that makes them a wave at all.

It makes me want to put it all out there.  To risk looking silly.  To risk being misunderstood.  To risk doing it differently than someone else.  Honestly, who cares?  If someone is embarrassed by something I say or create, I think that says something about them, not about me.  Yes, we’re all different, yet we’re also all the same.  If I scribble, and then show it in public, and then someone is critical or embarrassed on my behalf, it must be that they are imagining how they would feel if they did that.  Either that, or they are secretly envious of my bravery.  It takes courage to be vulnerable, and maybe my willingness to be so, will give someone else permission to let go of shame, or express something they have been fearful to show.

Here’s the song. There’s even an orange sky!