September 17, 2020, I wrote a blog post entitled Circles.

In July, I revisited my childhood home. Then I almost purchased a building I used to own. In September, I performed a wedding at the house where I spent my wedding night back in 1990.

I had a feeling I would be seeing more historic sites from earlier times in my life. I didn’t know where or how, but I was working on a book which is now at the printers, called Rear View Mirror. I write. After my first book came out a couple of years ago, I just kept writing. Rear View Mirror continues right where My Hand Paints left off. It naturally became more of a look back on my life, but still talking about the themes of creativity and painting.

Tomorrow, I am setting out on an unexpected trip, and I will be staying for four nights at the summer camp I worked at the summers of 1980, 1982 and 1983.

I wasn’t ready for this until now.

It is special for me to be able to share these places and memories with my kids. Doubling back helps me to put my life into perspective. I am embracing times that I have not talked or even thought much about for various reasons.

In my twenties, I had a negative outlook. If I felt disappointed, I blamed others and avoided working on underlying issues. I often felt disappointed. I had a habit of shutting those people out of my life, and moving on. I didn’t look back. But I carried that dysfunction with me. I was a poor communicator, and hurt people along the way.

I think things would have been much easier and happier for me if I had learned to say what I thought much earlier.

Well. It doesn’t work like that. I can’t go back and change who I was. Nor do I choose to feel guilty for those times I can not change. So I reach out, the best I can, to friends I abandoned at the next exit. I’m not that way anymore.

I understand if it’s too late. If it’s too little to say I’m sorry.

It is not too late for me.

I can forgive myself and do things differently now.

The reason for this trip is a sad one. A tragic one, that we again, unfortunately can not change. And so we bring our heavy hearts, and I will look for any lesson, any gift in this grief. We go to remember the dead, but we go for the living.

It’s hard for me to remember what I hoped to become as an adult. To think back on my childhood aspirations now, I would be looking through the filter of everything I have experienced in life.

I have memory images of being a child, but as much as I feel I relate to, or wish I relate to the childhood version of me, I’m superimposing the subsequent decades over that memory.

What I remember best is right now, and I wonder if I even have this right.

The summer I turned seven and the summer I turned nine, I was sent to the home of an angry aunt and uncle, because my parents were overseas.

I do not know, nor can I imagine, how this particular aunt and uncle were selected to care for my brother and me.

I told my cousin I wish the adult me could have cared for the child me. It was one of those things I said in a chat without really thinking about it. Once I said it, it really got to me.

If I had a time machine, that is what I would most like to do. Go back and care for the child that I was.

There is so much we just do not know. We make up our minds about things without having the facts, but I guess it feels comfortable somehow to think we have a firm opinion. This is not only silly (I was going to say foolish), it is unkind. We sum people up at a glance, and then we feel slighted or offended when others judge us in this way.

We do not have the whole story.

In the process of painting, brushstrokes get covered up. They are still in there, preserved in the layers of paint. They are part of the process, and inform the visible layers.

Not everything in life works out as we had hoped it would. There are things we don’t talk about. Things we’d probably rather had never happened at all. All of those experiences are still a part of us. We went through them, and we learned something. They helped us to become who we are today. They still lay in the layers of our past.

Colors we can not see.

Someone asked how much of my heart I pour into my paintings.

When I was younger, art was a way for me to document things. I remember a specific time, a specific show, when I realized that I could tell my personal stories through my art. I could say the things I hadn’t dared to put into words. Putting them into images somehow felt safer and less confining. Words can be so specific and one dimensional. Words can feel cold and harsh.

Through shapes and colors, I may tell the same story, but it can be as symbolic as I choose. It requires the viewer to engage and bring their own words.

I use both words and pictures now, but what I offer is my heart.

I hope that by expressing myself through art, that other people will want to try expressing themselves in creative ways as well. I’m thinking particularly of my children, but it goes for everyone.

Art can be intimidating. I think this is because we have expectations for the work. We judge whether it is good enough. Is it good enough to show to someone else? Is it good enough to hang in a public show?

I hear people talk about staring at a blank page, and the difficulty getting started. That blank page could be a sheet of drawing paper, a blank canvas on an easel, or a blank page in a writing notebook.

I’ve often heard people say “I can’t draw a straight line.” Of course you can’t. You use a straightedge for that. Straight lines and circles are hard to draw. Don’t judge your art based on that.

I sometimes watch an abstract painter on YouTube, and she always begins by making marks all over a blank canvas. She has a box of various mark making tools – pencils, crayons, charcoal. She gets her body moving and puts something on that surface. These are marks that won’t be seen in the finished piece.

Writing was more intimidating, I think, when we used typewriters. Now, you can start writing anything to get your juices flowing, and it’s simple to delete whatever you don’t want to keep.

Creative expression doesn’t have to be for public consumption. You can benefit in many ways by drawing, painting or writing even if no one else ever sees it. You will make discoveries, not only about how to use your chosen medium, but also about your inner truth and the symbols that will form your visual language and artistic style.

I find that when I stop worrying or trying to appeal to someone else, when I find meaning in an image myself, and the story behind it, I create my most satisfying work.

We tend to judge ourselves the same way. We wonder if we’re good enough, or what people think of us. You are good enough. You are enough, exactly as you are. And you are a treasure trove. All you have to do is let go of the expectations and begin to explore inside yourself. Besides, I’ll let you in on a secret… people aren’t thinking anything about you. Everyone is busy being concerned about themselves. If someone criticizes you, understand that they are actually criticizing themself. Their own self esteem is low, and they haven’t taken the time to understand. It’s easier for them to pick on someone else than to face their own issues.

I recently read an autobiography that I wrote almost thirty years ago. Throughout the first half of my life, I hated everything I did, and everywhere I went. It took me a long time to love myself and begin to understand what was important to me.

It doesn’t have to take that long.

Approval from others can be a wonderful thing. One way we nurture others is to affirm and accept them, and if we voice that affirmation, it can lift a person’s mood and inspire them. It could be just the encouragement they need.

What doesn’t work for me is creating art with the goal of getting approval from others.

Don’t get me wrong, I want other people to like what I create. It is just counterproductive to make that a goal for my art.

For my art to be meaningful and authentic, it has to come from my soul, a place far deeper than accolades.

Compliments are cheap. As an artist friend once described them, they are “a dead ringer for my third grade Sunday School class”.

Polite compliments without substance, indicate a belief that an artist’s ego is fragile, and that they need to be coddled and cajoled over everything they express. I’d say if an artist needs that, they are in the wrong field.

Everyone won’t love it, including the ones that said they did at your gallery opening. Besides, not all art is meant to be pretty or happy or easy to look at or understand. The important thing is that I love it. Me, the one with the paintbrush in my hand. The one who decides when something is ready to be seen.

So no. Approval from others is not a strong motivator for me, as much as I love a real conversation about the art and why it meant something to you.

I am not trying to be prickly or distant or exclusive. I do so very much welcome your sincere feedback, whether it is positive or negative.

This is a continuation of the previous post.