I don’t balance my personal life and my creative endeavors, because my creative endeavors are my personal life. I don’t take time off from being me in order to paint or make pottery. If anything, it’s the opposite. The squirt guns and Marco Polo that happen in the shallow end of the pool are a distraction from the life giving vents I find down deep.

That’s what creating art feels like to me.

The noise and demands of the world outside disappear and I lose track of time.

I never know what I might find down there on the bottom, or floating or swimming by. It might be something beautiful or scary or sad. Whatever it is, it’s ok. It’s something that’s inside me. I may not understand it yet, and that’s a good reason to have a nice long look.

I don’t believe there is anything that makes anyone better than anyone else. The only thing that makes anyone worse than anyone else is bad decisions.

It’s true some people have an easier time because they get certain opportunities, but that is an external factor, it is not about creativity or ability.

You don’t have to try to be unique. You are already unique. But the appeal of uniqueness is also a trap. Think of the ways you are alike. It’s that relatability that lets other people into your work.

Uniqueness is compelling when it is authentic, but being different just for the sake of being different is kind of the definition of insanity. So the tightrope of creativity is innovation with a purpose.

You want to say something new, or say something in a new way, but at the same time, you want to be understood, so you have to use a language that your audience will comprehend.

Imagine if I were going to give an important speech, but I wanted to be completely unique, so I made up my own language to deliver my speech in. No one would understand a word of it, and It would be absurd.

You can ask the hard questions, you can be as abstract or avant-garde as you like, but you might want to develop rapport first, or bring a completely unique detail to your work. If there is such a thing as a completely unique detail!

I think something like Mark Rothko’s color fields or Jackson Pollock’s action paintings may have been cutting edge when they were made, but once new ground has been broken, like on Manhattan Island, it is not virgin territory anymore.

Artists that came before us have added their work to the lexicon of art history that informs us, and as we break new ground in our work, we add to the cumulative body of human art.

It sounds like I am contradicting myself.

No! Be unique! Be authentically unique! Push the boundaries and see what you can discover. See what stones our predecessors have left unturned, and say what you have to say in whatever way you choose to say it.

These fish aren’t really painted. I painted the background color and then I removed some of that paint with a wet brush to create the fish. I treated the paint more in the way I would treat glaze on a clay pot.

I chose this frame because it made me think of old boats, old docks, old barrels and fish houses.

This piece speaks not only to the fishing industry here on Minnesota’s North Shore, but also to my Finnish heritage.

I believe that every person has the capacity to be creative. What I mean is, we all have similar hardware. We have hands for holding paintbrushes, eyes for seeing the subject, and also for seeing what we produce. We have a brain to process it all. We have nerve endings so we can feel. For some of us, those emotions find their way out our fingertips through paint and ink, through any number of artistic mediums and fields. For others, they come out through things like meditation, marathon running or compulsive cleaning. We all have our outlets. I think they come naturally. I don’t remember a time before I wanted to draw.

You can have a proclivity for something, but you still have to learn it. You have to practice, and hone your skills. When you plant seeds in your garden, you don’t just eat the produce right away. You have to water and care for the plants. It takes time. It takes nurturing. It’s the same way with the garden in your mind. You have to cultivate those seeds nature has given you. By the time creativity has matured, it is both innate and learned.

That learning is happening all the time if we only pay attention. With every firing of every synapse that stores the smallest bit of information in our brain, we are changed, and we can be inspired. It’s more noticeable when the big things happen, but we are affected by it all.

Maybe I haven’t always known specifically what I wanted to do as an artist, but I have always wanted to communicate.

In that sense, I have always wanted to do what I am doing now.

Spirituality and culture are at the core of my art. Not religion. Not patriotism. My interest goes further back to what it means to be a human… an earthling… not defined by any political or religious border or dogma.

Dear beautiful people:

Life is a transition. It’s one continuous transition that we ride like a slow motion roller coaster. It has all the thrills, all the joy, the friends screaming by our side. I am so happy to be on this ride with you.

I am starting the process of adopting again. Why? Because there is room in my house and room in my heart, and somewhere, a teen who has room for me and my family. A child whose puzzle piece will fit perfectly into our picture, and we will each be a piece that fits into theirs. I’ve been leaving cryptic messages in my blog. Now I want you to know.

I am getting overrun with paintings that also need to find a home, and our journey presents us with various expenses along the path.

The very day I met Raymond, we had a silent auction and artist’s talk at Higher Ed. I don’t think that is how we do things now. So I am open to suggestions.

Love from the Young family

I made my latte in this cup again this morning. It’s one of my favorites.

It’s big. It’s fairly thick, so it keeps coffee hot. It’s got a nice lip on it.

I like the texture both from an aesthetic standpoint, and for the secure grip it offers. I like pretty much everything about it.

This is an old medicine bottle of my dad’s. We brought it up from North Carolina last July, and I like it a lot. We don’t need more stuff to just sit on shelves, so we washed it several times, and filled it with maple syrup.

More and more, I find myself just letting paint be paint on a surface and not asking it to look like anyTHING. Even a version of a thing I’ve never actually seen in quite the way I painted it, like fish swimming amongst the high branches of tall trees.

I remember drawing the air conditioner in the art room in my high school in Africa. I thought the more I could make it look like that air conditioner, the better the drawing would be.

I think those were important exercises. They helped me learn to see what I was looking at. They helped me document something of the world, if not interpret it.

Now I don’t care much about air conditioners. I could indicate one with a few simple lines if it were important to what I was saying.

So I painted trees for a while, and then I put fish in them. Now I paint brushstrokes, and sometimes fish appear. I don’t always fight the urge to make one look more like a fish.

If I let the paint just be paint, with no preconceived ideas about what else it might represent, I’m sure the pictures will still reveal themselves when I lay still on my bed and stare at it on my wall.

Things I never intended, yet I painted them. Things I see that you may not, just as you may see things that I miss.

Photography is good at documenting what the camera sees, so the paint can relax and look like paint.

Beautiful glaze on a ceramic pot melts and goes through chemical changes in the intense heat of the kiln. It does what glaze does, and we see the beauty with its drips and crazing. In the same way, we can appreciate paint when it does what paint does, not asking it to always look like something it is not.

For some artists, I imagine signing a contract with a gallery would be a measure of success. I canceled my contract with a gallery, and it was long overdue. What a relief.

I performed my first wedding in 4 months. It was wonderful. Without boasting, can I say that is something I am really good at? And the endorphins… They all tell me how wonderful the ceremony was. They tell me, with tears in their eyes, that it was perfect, and that God sent me to them.

It’s kind of like drawing. I’ve done it so many times I could poo poo it. When you do something so many times, it becomes second nature.

If I draw a fish in 30 seconds and it looks good, it actually took me 60 years to draw that.

It’s not nothing. It’s experience.

I’m updating my home study, so I changed the batteries in the smoke detectors, checked the fire extinguishers, cleaned out the food trap on the dish washer (it was like dissecting an alien), ran the clean cycle on the oven, changed the filters in the Brita pitchers…. we even cleaned out my son’s closet!

Please send your positive energy in our direction. We will receive it with gratitude.

I’ve never been alone in my house for long. When I moved here, I was married, and we had two small kids. Then we had a baby. When the older kids graduated from high school, my wife left, and I still had Maddee here for about ten more years. Then I tried to fill the gaps. I tried dating.

I like to share my life.

I think experiences are more meaningful if I can share them with someone. I went on a trip across the country alone and drove right past the entrance to the Grand Canyon because there was no one to see it with.

The other problem is when you end up with the wrong person. A bad date, for example. There is something to be said for being alone.

Actually, there are things I like about being alone. Time to do projects without having to accommodate someone else’s schedule or needs. Or the way the house stays clean after you clean it.

I do like a clean house, but then I want to share it. What’s the point of a clean, dead house? It’s decadent. A big house for one person. Decadent and pointless. All it’s good for is taking a picture of. It’s made for a family, and so am I.

I think if I lived in this house all alone, I would just shrivel up. I don’t think I would have the motivation to do the things I love to do. Like when I went to North Carolina. I didn’t paint there. I didn’t write. I didn’t make pottery. I was depressed. I had the whole clean house to myself, and all the time I could want.

When Raymond and Summer came into my life, what can I say? They were my children. Like finding the puzzle piece that fits. It doesn’t replace the other pieces that also nestled into the contours of my life. Each piece does its part to complete the picture. And it’s not my picture. I’m just a piece fitting into Raymond’s puzzle, too. And Maddee’s. And Summer’s.

But as our case worker said, Raymond and I were a good match. We had an easy transition. I always thought this was because Raymond is so much like Maddee. Maddee always tells me how much she loves Raymond, and that he is perfect for us. Not perfect for ME. Perfect for US.