A week ago Monday, I unloaded a kiln full of new pottery. Here are pictures of a few pieces. You can see many more at instagram.com/timouth

I just got home from a long road trip.  I visited places I lived as a child.  I walked around the block at the first house I remember.  I walked past my first elementary school, and saw little kids running on the playground.  I told my son “that was me 55 years ago.”

It’s a good thing we can’t know what’s coming.  I’m sure I would have skipped a lot of it, but it was all necessary to get me right here.  And I’m glad I’m right here.

I visited the farm in Romeo again.  I spent more time in town.  I drove past my friend’s house.  She died recently, and the house has new owners, but I remembered her.

I spent a night with my aunt and uncle.  56 years ago, I was the ring bearer in their wedding.  It was wonderful to catch up with them.

The reason for the trip was to celebrate my dad’s 91st birthday.  Three of my four brothers were there, and we celebrated together.  I brought a few more pieces home with me.  They are exhibits in the museum of my life.

Yesterday, I reconnected with dear friends.  What joy.  More than friends.

A lot of water has flowed under all of our bridges, but the banks are firm, and we could all enjoy the view together.

I listened to the chime of the clock that hung in our dining room on the farm.  It was just below my bedroom, so I always knew what time it was.  It marked the time when I was a child, and still records the minutes all these years later.

Now I am back home.  My favorite place in all the world.

Usually, before I go to bed, I go to my studio and paint a little. The house is quiet, and it has become part of my bedtime ritual.

I was chatting online with my friend Lisa, and told her I was going to paint. I asked her for some colors. She listed her favorites, and I told her it would not be a representational piece, but asked her what I should think about while I’m painting. She said “Lisa’s happiness.”

When I create these abstracts, I try to be random, and rarely include anything intentionally. I paint on 11″ x 14″ watercolor sheets, but when I’m done, I quarter them to 5.5″ x 7″. There is just too much information in the whole sheet, and cutting it down further randomizes the composition.

They’re quick. She was still online when I came back upstairs. I showed her the images, and she picked her favorite. I see Lisa smiling, with one of her chickens on her head. It reminds me of a recent day when we played in her yard taking photos together. Another looks like her favorite beach where we bulldozed rocks with our hands, and I took videos of the waves rolling in.

I’ve said this before, but I don’t understand how these stories come out in paint and pencils without any intention at all.

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.