Faded Paint

Play along with me, it’s a metaphor.  The Olympics are where everyone wants to get. The Olympics are the pinnacle of your dreams, efforts, and passions. They are the place where the highest level of your skills are appreciated. You want to get to the Olympics because there you get to do what you love to do, among other people doing what they love to do, to the very best of your ability, while the world appreciates it and applauds.  Ok fine, take the crowds away, and the preverbal sports analogy. I’m talking about getting to do what you love to do the most, as a regular part of your life. Know what I'm talking about? I am talking about a skill or a practice, or craft. I'm not talking about self care (although honing a skill or craft may be one of the best forms of self care). This is something you are working at, getting better at, and it promises to make you and the world a little better. That’s as specific as I’m going to get, because whatever you're imagining, I mean to i...

It was gone as fast as it came. A flash. Four days ago. One minute I was my 50 year old self, fighting the downhill momentum of age, pedaling my 21 speed road bike, and a second later I was flying carefree on my red BMX pedal bike down my childhood street. Smiling, hair flying, with all the recklessness a boy of 10 has on a bicycle. The world held no limits. I felt it, it was real. I don’t know what it was that transported me for that one unexpected second in time. Something like this has happened to me before, a flash memory comes back, ephemeral. But never this tangible and vivid. I feel it truly happened for a second.  Maybe it was a smell. I was near an asphalt factory that has been there since I was a kid where they still fill huge noisy trucks with steaming loads of black asphalt, the rich sooty smell of hot tar sharp in your nostrils. The smell is distinct. But I smell it most days riding past here.  Maybe it was the angle of the morning sun flashing in my eyes through ...

I'm fresh off of a week of camp in central Michigan followed by a week backpacking in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. Both of these of these trips were great, both were exhausting; and both were ironically refreshing . The refreshing part may have to do with something else these two weeks shared in common, -during both weeks there was limited to no cell phone coverage. That's right, no emails, no texting, no weather reports, ...no Pokemon Go, ...no face bent into the cool glow of a three by five inch screen. Last week the upper left corner of my phone's screen held steadfast to it's "no service" stance, every one of the 5000 thousand times I checked, ...the first day.  It was weird.  It was weird because there were more people saying more things around me. There were more clouds, more trees, more conversations, and more going on everywhere I looked than there usually is. I had more time. I sat and chatted with real people about...

  "Where does the Grand River go?" "To Lake Michigan." "Well how do you know?" "Someone told me I guess." "So you don't really know...   but I do."

I finished a new oil painting.  It's called "...to the place I belong."  It is a painting of the log circle at Grand Rapids Public School's Zoo School.  My daughter Ellie is attending this 6th-grade-only school and is in the painting.  It was a gift for Mr. K (Dennis Kretschman) who has taught there 39 years and counting.  Prints were also auctioned off to raise money for the school and their annual auction. While picking Ellie up from Zoo School one fall afternoon I was particularly moved.   A sequence of observations followed…   ·       The symbolism in the scene, -covered and surround by the very nature they are studying and captivated by.   ·       The significance of moments like this in the lives of these kids as they grow into adults.   ·       The devotion and heart the teachers put into these kids that extends far beyond th...

There isn't necessarily any theological basis for this or anything, there isn't even any reason to think this would ever happen.  But what if you spent eternity in the kind of heaven you designed while here on earth?  What if heaven operated on the laws and rules you live your life by?  What if people treated each other just as you've treated others in this life?   Would you want to live in a heaven like that?   I think it might look way too much like this world. I pretty much spent most of my life living a sort of Christian "escapism" life.  One where Good is unattainable. Where we're no good, but forgiven, and heaven will be a place where it all gets better.   I think those things are true but...   I think this can be toxic thinking for a Jesus follower if it leads to some sort of fatalism about our potential in this world. Or believing we simply can't actually do any good that our Father would be proud of.   Listening to one ...

Ellie had to do a forestry project on a tree and she picked the Ohio Buckeye.  She had to do a bunch of stuff on the tree but one of the things was 2 creative types of literature.  She chose a recipe and a magazine article.  Here they are! 

From the ground, life rises up in a massive collective of praise to its creator.  The trees spread up and out their leaves together, reaching to give glory to the one that gave them life.  The view of a valley, is a symphony of greens fighting toward the sunlight.  A open field expresses its own mosaic of colors and textures rising to their maker. It is their purpose.  Like the rest of the earth, we were created to rise and extend the reaches and efforts of our lives up and out in praise to the one who made us.  It is our very purpose.  If the efforts of your life are not growing up and out to praise the one who made you are, quite simply, missing the reason you exist.  You may do some interesting things but understand, you will miss the whole point of life.  

Hazel’s Granddaughter POSTED BY  Evie Coates As I sling imperfect measurements of flour and brown sugar into a big enamelware bowl this morning, as I sip my coffee out of the Swede coffee cup (”you can always tell a Swede but you can’t tell him much”), as I drag my brushes through the vibrant liquid colors and commit them to the paper, my grandma is with me in the kitchen today. Hazel was my mother’s mother. Her middle name was Fern. She loved her family and was a consummate homemaker. She loved the nothingness of the Arizona desert. She loved the pink, cloudy evening skies of the West. In her opinion, the Tetons were God’s most extravagant gift to his children. She was an artist and took painting courses by correspondence. She had a real gypsy spirit and didn’t mind moving around, wherever the winds of opportunity blew her and her family. She was a rascally tomboy when she was young, and kept a healthy portion of that feisty nature as long as she lived. Read the rest of this entry...

I have finally finished a drawing I was asked to do a long time ago.  I spent a long time trying to figure out how to accomplish what I was asked to do.  I was asked to do some sort of commemorative drawing to go into the center of a mat signed by a bunch of people (myself included) who worked at Blodgett's Family Birth Center over the years.  I ended up doing a collage of images representing the building, old and new, and a mother and baby (Molly and Ellie).  Honestly the hand drawn lettering was probably the hardest part of it all.  I still have no idea where this piece will reside in the end.  But its finally done nonetheless.

In a few days a new Andrew Peterson album, Counting Stars , will be released.  If I haven't mentioned before he is my favorite living artist.  I have posted the video of one of the songs from this album, Dancing in the Minefields.  If you're not married some of its significance may be lost on you, but if you are... well if you are I think you'll enjoy it.

You forget, ya know.  So easily really.  You forget what's hidden in the quiet because the noise becomes so commonplace.  So you just believe that noise is really the truth, ya know.  But maybe the noise is mostly lies.  I don't know, maybe its not that sinister, maybe its just noise.  Maybe its kind of neutral.  But if life holds good, bad, and neutral, isn't the neutral really just bad after all?  Maybe its the worst kind of bad because it has a disguise and an alias. Anyways, back to forgetting what lies in quiet reflection.   Maybe the worst thing isn't forgetting all the "whats" found in the silence, but forgetting the "whats" are found there in the first place.  What if the greatest thought, or inspiration, or revelation lies just on the outskirts of a city called "noise" (who some refer to as "life") and we forget to take a stroll out past the glow and clamor of that collective mass.  I'm starting to think that forge...

A poem... If I told you, it would ruin it. If I exposed it to the air it would evaporate. If I did what I am tempted to do, I could never undo it. I know a beauty, that if spoken of, would wither and darken. The good has been done and anything more would corrupt it. So I will treasure up all these things and ponder them in my heart. I'm planning on returning to the 30 days thing here soon.  I had a couple things going on in  life that made it very tough to continue. Don't get me wrong, all is well.  Expect a revisit soon.

Here's today's result of my 30 Day Creative Challenge .  No, its not a beer!  The idea selected from yesterday was Michael's, who simply suggested, "Tea."  So I brewed a pot of tea, poured myself a hot cup, got my oil paints out and painted my hot cup of tea in my favorite clear tea mug.  I like to drink tea out of this mug because I can see how strong or weak i have made it very easily.  This was painted with only Titanium White, Ivory Black, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, and a touch of Yellow Ochre Light.  This is the one I've had the most fun doing but probably only because this is more my style.  Oh well, I did it in under two hours so I am most happy with that fact.  Usually when I have an inspiration for a painting I consider how to go about it, sketch it, plan it out, and then consider all the work its going to take to complete it and I get overwhelmed and never tackle it, let alone finish it.  This little experiment has been very encoura...

Well it has not been consecutive days but here is the result of Day 3 of my 30 Day Art Challange .  Heather's idea was randomly selected.  Her idea was: " Sara Groves writes "I just showed up for my own life....the glory of God is man fully alive." What does it look like to choose to live fully alive. Alive to our longings- met and unmet-, alive to who we were truly created to be, unafraid of ourselves, restored, honest in the struggle of the journey we are on, showing up each day as the best version of ourselves..."     Just Showed Up For My Own Life... Interestingly I have always liked this song myself.  Its really tough to try to produce something with a fairly developed concept in a very short amount of time.  Something like his scene is what I picture when I hear this song and think about this concept.  I have long been intrigued by Van Gogh's " Sower with the Setting Sun " which is about the infinite God and man shown here.   Some...

So the idea for today's 30 Day Art Challenge was Joseph's and it was " the lights at the end of the optics are different colors make up a city."  He also included a link to a picture of some fiber optics lit up similar to the one above.  I wasn't exactly sure what he meant by that but this is what I made.  It was created in Photoshop from a photo of some fiber optic filaments and a night photo of Grand Rapids.  The only other idea i had was to actually create a fiber optic city scene.  You can purchase the filament pretty cheaply and I figured you could use black foam-core to sketch a city on and poke pin holes through to feed the fibers through.  I could  use different colored LEDs to light the fibers and it'd be pretty cool.  Buuuutttt...  obviously I don't have the time to order the filament (they didn't have any at Hobby Lobby, I checked) and figure it all out if I have to do this in an hour or so of my time.  So this is what ya ge...

This is the results of Day 1 of my 30 day experiment .  Ok, so Ken's idea was chosen by random selection from a hat and here is my take.  I have never been too much of a cartoon-type illustrator but this is about stretching  myself so here's a stretch...really.  Its a pretty bad photo of it but if you click on it you can see it a little better.  I hope you at least get the idea.  Ninjas are supposedly always around us, we just don't see them because they're so...uh... ninja-ie.  So here's rush hour in a typical day when everyone in the world is a Ninja.  By the way, that is a dead cat with a throwing star stuck in it, in the road.  I'm not a cat hater, its just what I think a world full of Ninjas would look like.  Ken's Idea, my take. Alright, day 2.  Let's have some good ideas.  Feel free to re-submit any ideas from previous days that didn't get chosen but also feel free to come up with new ones.  They can be things/feel...

30 days, 30 creations.  For 30 days I am going to try and attempt to produce 30 new creations from your ideas.  I have a family, a job, and a life (at least I consider it that) so this is tailored to fit that context.  I have a problem of  taking too long to move a creative idea to artistic completion.  Sometimes its so long the completion never comes.  I need to stretch myself on quickness and creativity.  It's a speed exercise for a an artist who has become too used to running distance.  Its an experiment.  And hopefully it will be fun.  Here's the deal: Each day I will take subject ideas from you (whoever you are) and produce something...er...creative from one of the suggestions.  If there is none, I will ask someone specifically for an Idea.  I will then spend some time in the evening making something related to the subject chosen.  Here's the fun part... Who's-ever's idea I work on, they will get whatever I create ....

So I've been pretty obsessed with this song lately.  Jon Foreman (lead of Switchfoot) descibes the rapid flourishing of the pharmaceutical companies as indicative of their claim, and our belief, that drugs bring abundant and true life, -on the market drugs and off the market drugs.  I agree with him.  This era, among other things, is the chemical era. The chemicals intially appear to help but eventually they enslave and cripple.  I don't know when we started to believe that life shouldn't be painful or hard or depressing -at times, but whenever that was, we figured out chemicals could soften it, or mask it, or whatever.  Once we've softened or masked it we don't need to work as hard at figuring out the reason for the pain or struggle.  We can get rid of the problem by numbing ourselves to it.  Alcohol used to be the old numbing agent, but that has become easy for people to identify as a problem.  The chemicals our good doctors prescribe...

KAMROOZ ARAM  Supreme Elevation II, 2009, Oil on canvas, 182.9 x 274.3 cm This is a painting I really like.  It is by Kamrooz Aram.