the quiet and not-so-quiet moments of comforting. your child. your friend. your partner. when they see the storm coming and you are there. when the storm is raging around them and you are there. when the eye of the storm gives false pause and you are there. when the tides pull back and regain momentum and you are there. when the storm has finally passed, the debris is fierce and you are there. when the rebuilding starts and you are there. the storm – physical or emotional – does not have to be endured alone.
when i see images of mountains these days, i naturally think about kirsten and becky. The Girl is living the out-in-the-high-mountains life and the photographs she sends me are nothing short of stunning. i love every moment i spend out there, so i can appreciate wholeheartedly her finding her “place”.
when i was little, we used to go to the mountains in upstate new york. my sweet momma and poppo would rent a cabin in a state park and we would travel up there; they would always allow me to take a friend – most of the years this was susan. i was the youngest by FAR (haha! are you reading this, seester?) so i was the only one left in the house. i was always thrilled to have my siblings’ families with us as well. my nieces and nephew were adorable. plus heather was the perfect foil on the mountainside beaches (and long island beaches as well); as a toddler she flirted with every cute boy around every time i took her there. she was with me a lot as a little girl; i took her everywhere in my little vw bug, especially in the summer. nothing like a little girl who would seemingly deliberately throw the frisbee onto the next blanket where a cute boy was sitting and listening to his transistor radio. what a fun way to meet ‘people’. wink!
later in life, my parents rented condos in the mountains of tennessee and the whole family joined them there. sunsets behind the big deck of the clubhouse, shrimp boils in the field, frisbee and hiking. those are treasured memories.
this image MOUNTAIN IN YELLOW SKY reminds me of every good mountain memory. its warmth, its simplicity. both appeal to me. the really funny thing is that this is just a mere morsel of one of david’s paintings. the painting TOGETHER ON THE BEACH is where i found this and extracted it to create a whole new image. when i asked david where i could find this canvas in the studio the other day, he told me he had painted over it. what?! what was he thinking?! fortunately, i still have the image i took of it and have created a canvas art print of that painting and a close-up of it as well.
MOUNTAIN IN YELLOW SKY…just a little piece of TOGETHER ON THE BEACH. both simple. both dreamy. both beautiful.
i have stood many a time in pier one or target, or many other retail stores, staring at a canvas print or glass-framed picture wondering if i should purchase it. the prices at pier one and target are pretty good, not to mention any additional sales and coupons. they have great buyers and often the words-only pieces or artwork speak to me. and so i vacillate (cause that’s what i do about buying stuff…ask especially linda or carol about my buying history or, of course, david.) the thing i know is – i can always return it. pier one or target won’t take it personally, and then they can put it back into the mass-produced inventory knowing someone else will buy it.
many many years ago i stood in a gallery staring at a piece of sculpture. it completely spoke to me. it is a figure bowing and was sculpted by duke kruse, the father of 20, our dear friend. i did not have any extra money at the time but this piece was wrapping itself around my heart. i wasn’t sure what to do. i ended up splurging and purchasing it. i have never looked back. this figure graces my studio and i see it every day. every day i know that duke’s hands shaped this clay, duke’s heart designed this, duke’s artistry lives on in my studio. i always always feel good looking at this, touching it, watching it grow as i grow.
although i own some mass-produced pieces and love them, with exception (like the mass-produced beautiful print i own that an artist friend of mine drew and lettered) i don’t think that physically touching a mass-produced piece connect me to a real person like The Bow does. or like the paintings in our home that david painted. or the little clay house or the beautiful vase that jay made me a few years ago. or all the pieces of The Girl and The Boy childhood art still out. not that it’s always necessary, but there’s something about real.
david’s paintings are on a big sale right now. 50% off. we want them to be in homes where they resonate with the people living there, where they will grow with the family and where they will be touched. sometimes that’s not an easy decision to make – to purchase a painting; there are always other bills or things to spend money on.
it is for this reason -even-more-budget-friendly- we are also creating products, although not mass-produced, that represent each of the days of our studio melange, our weekly assortment of cartoons, designs, photographs, paintings, words, songs….products that have secondary practical uses like mugs, cards, tote bags, throw pillows, and yes, the leggings facebook seems to want to feature with my blog posts, overriding the actual primary purpose of these posts and products- a little teeny message in your day in this chaotic world. we offer these with as much sincerity as our original pieces; we hope those of you who have ordered products can feel our good wishes.
the thing i can tell you about these real paintings, though, is how they make me feel. the brushstrokes are tactile, the color right under your fingertips, the heart obvious.
i was distracted when d brought the camera back to me. working on something, i glanced up and thanked him. a few moments later, i asked him how the painting he was working on was going. “i scrubbed it,” he said. “what?!” i replied. “i started something else,” he said. when he left the room, i looked at the camera. this is what i found. an extraordinary look at earth, removed from earth, from a distance away. fragmented mother planet through the haze, i found it to be a striking – and yet abstract – image, with rich, almost-metallic hues. how does he do that?
this is EARTH INTERRUPTED V: FROM A DISTANCE. we need this perspective every now and then. we lose sight. we fall prey to overwhelm in our own stuff. we are but a speck of a fragment on this earth. we are both tiny and vast. and we are capable of doing both tiny and vast things to help our earth and each other.
david’s painting SHARED FATHERHOOD makes me weep. it is a powerful painting of two fathers tenderly and humbly holding their baby. it is love in a pure form. it makes me think of my son, The Boy. i can see him in this painting and the possibility of him choosing one day to share fatherhood.
SHARED FATHERHOOD, mixed media 39.5″ x 51″
in the very corner of this painting is the morsel i chose for today. a doorway. or is it a window? either way, it struck me as a morsel image, especially in the context of this painting.
so many figurative doorways/windows, so little time…. is it a doorway into acceptance? into inclusion? into openness? into home?
we sat this morning, over early coffee, and talked about our perception of ourselves. how we can’t see that we exhibit the very things we tout we aren’t. or, conversely, how we aren’t (in whole) the things that we tout we are. how scary is that? it’s human. we ponder and perseverate over the things we believe. and we realize in moments of self-judgement that, yet again, we have a view of ourselves that is perhaps somewhat inconsistent with who we are. that goes both ways, however. the times we believe we are not enough, we are incomplete, we don’t measure up – those times are also inconsistent with who we are.
the doorway in – to acceptance of where we are, what we have been through, where we are going – to learning more – to growing – to knowing we are held in grace – to forgiveness of others and ourselves – to trying again tomorrow – to home, a place of as much gratitude and peace we can muster and then even more – this is a doorway/window in to shared fatherhood (read: parenthood) of the world, where each of us is responsible to do our best, bring our best, try our best.
my husband is a painter. of course, you know that. his studio is steps away from mine, steps away from our office, steps away from the coffee pot. what that means is that i can just pop in at any time to see what he’s painting, to chat, to have a cuppa or bring down a couple glasses of wine, to throw myself in front of paintings he is about to cover over with a swath of new paint.
what’s really fascinating is the process of his painting. i will walk down and find pieces on the wall or the easel that speak to me and he will tell me that he is “no where neeeeear done.” he takes pictures along the way and i scam them onto my camera roll for future use, not willing to let go of the resonance of one of the along-the-way iterations of a painting.
this week is a perfect example of that. he was in the middle of a painting – a follow-up to earth interrupted I – when i went downstairs to chat (read: procrastinate doing whatever it was i was supposed to be doing at the time.) the image and color screamed out at me. i couldn’t beLIEVE he was going to cover it all up with more paint. the process was so striking. take a moment to just really look at these process shots and the morsel i chose and breathe them in:
process morsel
process morsel
morsel of a process morsel – held in process
and yet, the finished painting earth interrupted II is a stunning, stunning, stunning canvas. it belongs somewhere to get its due. it makes me feel like the universe is weeping for the earth. it makes you pay attention to it. i am humbled by how truly magnificent this painting is.
earth interrupted II, mixed media 48″ x 34.5″
each week i design products from each of the days in our melange. some of these are cartoons, some just words, some lyrics or song titles and some are david’s paintings. i have the creative latitude to choose morsels of his paintings and design from there…a enviable starting point for someone who loves flexibility. this week is a sort of brain stretch. with the exception of designing leggings, where i used both of the morsels on this page, the morsel i have used in design is a morsel of a morsel process shot of earth interrupted II (i said it was a brain stretch.) it is called held in process and is a beautiful (and absolutely timely) image on its own. how odd that it is not actually the painting, but is underneath the painting, a layer of earth interrupted II.
it makes me wonder if we ever think about how layered everything is, everyone is. what is beneath the surface…a richness we may never know, a history we can’t necessarily comprehend. where we have all come from is woven color and texture and light and darkness, swaths of paint and attempted erasures that would cause other people to stand in front and call out to us, “no! don’t erase that! it’s beautiful! it’s important! it speaks to me.” we are all held in process.
there is maybe nothing that says “cool” more than a bass player. upright bass or electric. they have a certain air, a je ne sais quoi, that just quietly and intensely says ‘phat’.
jim is like that. he was the throw-anything-at-me-and-i’ll-astound-you bass player on a couple of my albums. such a great sound. he’s a top-shelf musician and i’m proud to have had his playing as part of my recordings.
the bass player, 24″ x 48″
this painting makes me think of jim and also of several of The Girl’s and The Boy’s friends from high school. they were bass players in jazz band (and every other band that our district offers) and they rocked the house. many of them, like jim, are in chicago now and i hope they are playing and still rocking the house.
this cityscape morsel comes from david’s painting the bass player. when i was photographing the full painting, i kept zero-ing in on this morsel….the city at night. i love the fun of it, the color, the chaos. designing products with this morsel was a blast! i got lost in the possibilities. just as you can get lost in the night in this city.
it snowed a lot here in the last week or so. d tried to make our broken-ancient-snowblower into happy news of “getting exercise.” the piles-of-snow-in-parking-lots are really high and they are at that stage where they look like yesterday’s news – they are dirty and a little tired. today and tomorrow it’s supposed to rain which might clear some of that out. our little xb (aka “little baby scion”) is filthy. i look at the weather apps on my phone often, looking for sunny days and temperatures that linger above 50 degrees (maybe.)
we were out on the east coast last summer and went down to the cape to enjoy some beach time. it was heaven. (yes, i know the proper use is “heavenLY” but trust me, it was heaven.) a warm day, ocean waves, full of lobster and amazing seafood we had eaten from wood’s seafood and fish market, we laid out our blanket. we talked, we drew in the sand, we walked on the water’s edge, we collected rocks and shells, we napped. the nap wasn’t intentional. but it was delicious. if i close my eyes, i can almost (almost) touch it.
right about now, i am yearning for a nap on the beach. so this stunning painting-by-my-sweet-husband on this dr thursday (david robinson thursday) in the melange speaks to me. i’d imagine there are a few of you out there in the middle-of-winter who might be with me on that.
it took my breath away when he painted it. it takes my breath away now.
sharing studio space with my artist husband has many benefits. we can interrupt each other with questions or comments or what-the-heck-is-thats or sometimes tears. i am a great interrupter. i am from long island; interrupting is an art form there. ask crunch or sue or marc AU.
two rocking chairs in the studio means we can mutually sip coffee (or wine) together while pondering what’s next. or brainstorm. or discuss current politics (ugh). or argue. or concoct new ideas. my C5 is upstairs in a different studio, away from paint and acrylic and gesso and scissors and my sewing-machine-induced-scraps and power tools and a sound system that is sometimes cranked up. a melange. welcome to DR davidrobinson thursday.
i won’t forget the day i walked downstairs and saw this painting in progress. the raw emotion is striking and -at once- comforting.
as you head into the weekend and, maybe, your celebration of valentine’s day, i wish for you – in whatever is your own cherished relationship – this feeling. loved. encircled. embraced. held in grace indeed.
reverse threading 