Those critiques in art school make more sense to me now.  A lot flows out of us unintentionally and we aren’t even aware of it. From our body language, facial expressions, and of course the words and images that we piece together and document. Our meaning can be very obvious to other people, and we can completely miss it. 

We can’t paint without saying something in the image. You can learn a lot about young children from their art.

I often draw and paint in a purposefully detached manner, and then later I feel almost like I can view it as an onlooker… a bystander. These abstract paintings are neither random nor contrived. They are satisfying and often enlightening for me. 

I feel like a child, unconcerned about precision, let alone perfection.  I break the rules about how I thought art supplies should be used together.

Dreams are another example of our mind piecing together what at first glance look like random bits of information. They’re not random at all. The story lines are complex and intertwined. They are poignant and tell a story better than my conscious mind ever could. 

A while back… a year, or years ago, I sent a friend request to someone I had been engaged to 40 years ago.  I let that line soak until I almost forgot about it.  When I got no response, I cancelled it.  I wasn’t trying to rekindle anything.  I was just curious about the paths of life.  I wanted to forgive everyone.  Not everyone needs forgiveness.  Maybe I wanted to ask for forgiveness.

I just woke from a dream where I had gotten a package in the mail in response to that friend request.  It was hundreds of handwritten pages on newsprint, interspersed with ephemera from my life in 1980 or 81.

I awoke in the darkness of my bedroom, pondering the dream.  There was a time I would have considered this a nightmare.  There is no reason to fear what lurks inside us.  I can own it now.  In the past I may have made choices I wouldn’t make now.  In the past, I thought differently about the facts of my life.  I was programmed for shame and fear.  Now I’m able to look at the artifacts with some objectivity.  With kindness.  With forgiveness.

She was better off without me.  Not because there was something wrong with either of us.  We were just incompatible.  This is not unusual.  Not scandalous. The parting of our ways may have seemed sad at the time, but the real tragedy would have been staying together. 

Even then, at 20 years old, I was trying to piece a family together.  During the decades that followed, I tried many approaches to creating the family I dreamed of.  I seem to have left a pile of debris in my wake, but that’s not accurate.  It’s not debris.  It’s nothing to be threatened by.  It seems more like the candy that’s still squashed on the pavement after the parade has gone by.  I want to look at each item.  I don’t need to cling to every page, every shard.  The details flow out onto the paper in brushstrokes or words, they appear in dreams.  This backlog of experiences is the museum of my life.

I didn’t decide to be an artist. That’s like trying to remember when I decided to be a boy. I just was. I remember drawing before I started kindergarten. I remember standing before an easel in Mrs. Barnes’ kindergarten class, wearing a smock, painting. I wish I had that painting now. I wish I could hold that child, and assure him that everything was ok. I know where he is. What lay ahead of him is behind me now. I hold him and reassure him as best I can.

In order to get my creative juices flowing, I just open my eyes and ears. I explore the world around me with my physical senses. If I touch, smell or taste something, that information gets stored, along with the sights and sounds. It’s automatic. Everything just goes into the file, and I end up with an idea of my surroundings. My universe. Everyone does this. The creative part comes when I pull the files and interpret the information. Everyone does this differently, even if we experience the same part of the world at the same time. That’s the creativity. It’s who I am. Creating art comes when I pick up a pencil or paintbrush, or anything that can leave a visible line or pigment behind. Sometimes I document something I’ve seen in the physical world. More often lately I let a line be a line, let a color be a color. After my hand paints or draws a few layers, I look at it.  While creating it, I’m sure I’m making choices that are appealing to me, but usually not a story.  With these mixed media compositions, I recognize the story later. Or not. But I still enjoy the way the colors and shapes interact. Often, the story is clear. Either way, I am not disappointed, because I have no expectation. Just discovery and surprise. I didn’t spell it all out without leaving something for the viewer to discover, even when the viewer was me. Those expectations were always the main obstacle. It’s like trying to cram God into a theology book. Creativity is so much bigger than my expectation. It just doesn’t fit. I create for myself. I love to share what I create, and I feel a thrill when someone else relates to or understands what I’ve done. Their reaction won’t make or break me.  It’s just my creativity breathing out. The act of painting calms me. Brushstrokes that I love get covered up, and that’s ok. I breathe out, and that’s ok. I’ll just breathe in again. Until I don’t. Then I guess I’ll be done painting.  The advice I would give you is to find the thing you love. The thing you are passionate about, and do that. We’re not all painters. Do the thing you do.

When I was really little, I’d see the squirrels running around our yard in Michigan.  I wanted to catch one so bad!  I propped up a box, and baited it with peanut butter on a tongue depressor.  A string ran from the prop stick to where I watched from just inside the door.  No squirrel ever fell for my plan, and I don’t know what I would have done if I’d ever actually caught one.  It could have easily escaped from the box on the grass, I know that now.

We have a lot of squirrels and chipmunks around our house in Minnesota.  They feast on the pine nuts in our front yard, and make piles of pinecones all over the place.  The chipmunks made a home under our front stoop.  We watched them going in and out.  Then I noticed squirrels going into the garage.  Later, I found that they had been nesting in a box which contained, among other things, my daughter’s sweatshirt.  That’s was going too far, so I set a have-a-heart trap near the chipmunk hole.

With each squirrel or chipmunk we trapped, we took pictures, and then drove them about six miles from the house, to an area with no homes, and lots of nice pine trees.  We caught each release on video.  You can see them on my Facebook page or my instagram.

My son loves being able to see them up close.  The rodents don’t seem too concerned.  They have always been used to us.  It’s fun to see them exit the trap.  Most of them pause as they step out onto the ground, before scampering away with cheek pouches full of peanut butter.

I think we’re up to 17 catch-and-releases now, and it fulfills that dream I had as a 6 or 7 year old.

I think outside of the box. As an artist, this can be a valuable skill, but it is just as important when it comes to parenting. 

My son happens to have a developmental disability, and it’s been his dream to work for an organization like the DNR or the Forest Service. 

He worked in at least three restaurants as a dishwasher/busser, and no one could figure out how to get him into the field that he really wanted to pursue. 

In our free time, we often take our fishing boat out. We started seeing inspectors at boat landings, checking equipment for invasive hitchhikers. We agreed that that would be a good job for Raymond. Not long after that conversation, I saw a local job posting for that position, and applied. I didn’t think I would get the job. When they called me back, I told them I couldn’t take the job because my son needed me. I told them that I actually applied for him. He doesn’t have a driver’s license, which is a requirement for the job. They said they would hire him too! 

Now Raymond and I work together monitoring our lakes and rivers for invasive species. We have both learned a lot, and now are able to help educate other people about our important and delicate ecosystem. At the same time, we get to do what we love, spending time together outdoors with a purpose.

Checking and cleaning equipment, draining lake water from boats and tanks is crucial to protecting the delicate balance in our waterways.

It’s not too late.

Over 90% of our lakes in Cook County are not infested!  We can not eradicate invasive species, but we can all work together to slow their spread. 

Lakes with spiny water fleas show fewer numbers of native game fish like walleyes, and those are of smaller size.

We can’t just throw our hands into the air and give up.

Learn how to check your boat, canoe, kayak and other equipment, and then take a few minutes to check it every time you enter or exit a lake. 

You can see more of my photography at http://timeong.blogspot.com