Small prints purchased from my shop (12×16 inches and smaller) all ship flat in a sturdy mailer, so they are easy to immediately frame and hang on your wall. However, all prints 16×20 inches and larger are shipped rolled in paper within a sturdy cardboard mailer. As a result, I am sharing some tips for flattening large prints prior to framing. 

To flatten rolled prints, first carefully remove the rolled print(s) from the cardboard packaging. The prints will be wrapped in paper and may be secured with tape. Remove any tape and I recommend leaving the prints within the paper for protection when you unroll them onto a flat surface.

The ends of the packaging paper may be tucked inside the roll. If so, pull out the paper and then prepare to unroll the print face down on a clean, flat surface large enough for the size of the print. 

Before unrolling the prints, find some heavy, flat objects to rest on top of the prints, such as a stack of books, and have them nearby. As you start to unroll the prints, carefully place the heavy items on each corner ensuring that the prints and protective paper are completely flat with no bends or wrinkles.

Leave the prints in this flattened position with the books resting on top for approximately 24-48 hours to allow the paper to relax (note that in colder temperatures they may need to rest in this position a bit longer). 

Once you are ready to frame the prints, carefully remove the heavy objects and handle the prints with care. It’s best to immediately frame the prints to avoid any unintended bends or damage. The prints may still be slightly curled rather than completely flat, but they should be relaxed enough for framing. If you feel that prints may need more flattening time, carefully return the books to the corners and wait another 24-48 hours.

I hope that is helpful and if you have any questions, just let me know!

But this summer has been different. I’ve been working especially hard to stay more connected to my painting practice because I have a solo exhibit at a local gallery later this year. One thing that is true regardless of the season is that I always do well when working towards a distinct deadline, so I’ve been returning day after day to my studio where I’ve been painting lots of new landscapes, and more recently, exploring and playing with collage and still life.  

It’s been very satisfying to see the stacks of paintings grow, but suddenly the end of summer is in sight and fall is right at our doorstep. I’ve been thinking a lot about seasonality in creative work, but also how it’s important to continue to sustain a creative practice year round. As the solo show approaches and summer fades, I already feel myself shifting gears slightly away from painting to other tasks and prep work, including finalizing what paintings will be included and planning out framing. 

These other tasks are a necessary part of the process, but I try to sneak in as many painting sessions as I can. I try to hold on and sustain the creative flow and the rhythm of my brushstrokes because, yes, the seasons shift and the daily tasks will change, but the thing holding all these days together is the act of making something new and the joy of creating something that didn’t exist before. 

As we approach the end of August, the breeze has started to feel a little cooler, like we’ve turned a corner into the next phase of the year. But the subtle changes — the acorns bouncing on the sidewalk, a sudden streak of gold through the trees — are happening while the flowers are still blooming and the buzz of cicadas continues to fill the hot summer afternoons. Summer is still here, still hanging on a bit longer, still making room for me to sit down and paint in the warmth of the early evening light. And it occurs to me that maybe summer has always been my creative season, maybe every season is my creative season if I just keep showing up at my painting desk, keep shifting and changing with the sun.

This print is available in the full range of sizes up to 24x36 inches.

This is just one of many of my prints inspired by travels to the California coast, a place I return to again and again, cherishing every visit, every opportunity to take in its rugged splendor. Another one of my favorites is my Looking Out painting, which is also available in multiple sizes up to 24x36 inches.

My Carmel print also pairs nicely with some of my photographs, including my Amsterdam Buildings print.

But instead I’m still thinking about, living with, and writing about winter. I’ve heard it said that clutter attracts more clutter, and after last week’s snowstorm here in Minnesota, it’s safe to say that, this year, winter has definitely attracted more winter.

We had a few brief days of warmer temperatures accompanied by the beautiful sound of melting snow dripping off the roof, but then just as April began, we were immersed back into winter, leaving the store-bought vase of tulips on my kitchen counter as the only sign of spring. 

I choose to live here in Minnesota, which I feel negates my ability to complain (unless it’s to a fellow Minnesotan and we are wallowing in our shared sense of “we are so over winter” camaraderie), but this has been one of the longest winters in my recent memory. On top of the endless feeling of it all, it’s been nothing short of hard work. Shoveling heavy snow, walking down the sidewalk in constant worry that you might slip on the ice, and then just doing it all over (and over) again.

But I grew up here and I choose to still live here, and yes, despite the cold and the snow and the ice and the sheer length of it all, I do love it here in all its beautiful, treacherous, winter glory.

Images from a March trip to the North Shore of Lake Superior

And now, thankfully, there are some hopeful signs of spring: buds on the trees, brief spells of warm sunshine, birdsong, flowers just starting to bloom on a neighbor’s tree. And there are even 70(!) degree temperatures in the forecast. Soon this snow will all melt and the tulips really will be sprouting from the ground, and after this long winter, I’ll be all the more grateful for it.

Painting Thumbnails

I love to tape off sections and paint small watercolor landscapes within the frame. Sometimes I use photo references, but often I just paint landscapes directly from my imagination. That’s what I did in the photos below. I grew up on the flat prairie of southern Minnesota and I wanted to paint the big skies that tower over the flat horizon. I tried to remember some of the skies I’ve seen while driving down the highway with the horizon stretching around me in every direction.

When I’m done painting these little thumbnails, I let the paintings dry and I peel back the tape. This step is surprisingly enjoyable and satisfying. I love peeling back the tape to find the crisp outlines — they feel like little framed windows looking out into the scene.

Sometimes these little thumbnails inspire larger paintings, and I use them a lot when I’m trying to work through the best approach to a particular scene. It’s helpful to explore value, composition, and color in a series of smaller thumbnails before diving into the larger painting.

Loosening Up

Sometimes I have a specific thing I want to paint in my sketchbook, but often I sit down without a plan with the simple goal of playing with color and shape. These unplanned painting sessions are good lessons in loosening up and not overthinking things. The meditative, go-with-flow nature of these paintings is calming, but the act of exploring without a plan also helps me figure out what might work in a future painting. Or more often than not, they help me figure out what doesn’t work, which is just as valuable.

Exploring other Mediums

I also use sketchbooks when I want to try out a different medium. Last year I painted a series of oil paintings in a sketchbook, just to shake things up and to see what it felt like to paint with an approach that is completely different than watercolor. I also occasionally use gouache because it can be very satisfying to paint over my mistakes. I don’t get that luxury as a watercolor painter, so it can feel wonderful to build up the layers of paint and not worry about losing the transparency.

I’ve also been doing a lot of thumbnail drawings in colored pencil when I want to quickly get some color down on the page. I love watercolor, but it’s fun to explore the different textures and marks and feeling that you can get with these other mediums. It helps shift the energy in my practice, if only for a quick sketch. And I always find my way back to watercolor eventually.

Travel Journals

I also use my sketchbook when traveling. I take hundreds of photographs when I’m on vacation, but there’s nothing like capturing a place directly on the page with my own hand. We traveled to New Mexico in October 2021, our first trip in years due to the pandemic, and I love my photographs and watercolor paintings from that trip, but I also cherish my sketchbook pages, including quick sketches at Ghost Ranch and the more detailed sketchbook paintings and drawings of the amazing tour of Georgia O’Keeffe’s home in Abiquiú. I painted the more detailed spreads once I returned back home using photo references. It was a great way to stay immersed in the feeling of that place after the trip was over and I had returned back to normal life.

To Remember

I know I’ll always find comfort in my sketchbooks, whether it’s the feeling of finding the next blank page and creating something new, or revisiting an old sketchbook and taking a trip back in time to those earlier drawings and paintings and ideas. They soothe me as I make them, and they reassure me later, helping me to remember that specific point in time. Where I was, what I was working on, what I was exploring.

As for consistency, I wish I had a more focused, daily sketchbook practice, but I tend to work in phases, and I’m slowly accepting this about myself. I go deep into a sketchbook for a period of time, but then shift to something else, only to return again, and then move on again. It’s not a daily thing — at least not right now — but it’s a recurring thing. And for me, right now in this particular season, that is good enough.

It is not an exaggeration to say that New Mexico enchanted me (I learned later that it is officially The Land of Enchantment). Our trip was perfectly timed to see the clusters of yellow cottonwood trees spread out across the distant valleys, their leaves incandescent in the fall sunlight. The bright sunshine cut across the adobe buildings, creating shadows that were sharp as the edge of a knife. And each night the sunsets gave deeper meaning to the term Golden Hour. The light shifted and changed, slowly turning the mountains and rocks along the horizon into a kaleidoscope of ochres and burnt siennas and Payne’s Grey, until the sky eventually darkened and lit up like an IMAX theater with more stars than I’ve ever seen.

It was a short trip, but spending some time immersed in the landscapes around Santa Fe, Abiquiu, and Taos was exactly what my creative spirit needed. Those five October days fed me in countless ways, and continued to feed me as I painted this series of watercolors during the long, cold, never-ending Minnesota winter that followed.

The reason for the trip started as a Georgia O’Keeffe pilgrimage. I had just finished reading Foursome, a book about her relationship with Alfred Stieglitz and another artist couple, Rebecca Salsbury and Paul Strand. Both O’Keeffe and Salsbury moved to New Mexico and and I enjoyed reading about how they immersed themselves in that place and how it directly and profoundly influenced their art (Salisbury painted reverse oils on glass, a process that my mind still cannot fully comprehend). After two years at home, I was longing for some big, captivating views, and as I considered potential destinations I kept thinking of that book and their art. I longed to stand on that land and look out onto the hills and mountains and desert that O’Keeffe captured in her paintings. I wanted to visit her studio and take in her artwork, all while searching for a new spark for my own work.

Once I arrived, I literally vibrated with a new energy. It felt so good to be out in the world again, to remember that I can navigate to places outside of my neighborhood, to see Pedernal with my own eyes, to get a last minute ticket to tour O’Keeffe’s home and studio. And to feel my creative spirit return like an actual physical object that I could hold in my hands and take back home with me.

I painted these watercolors in the months that followed and they are directly inspired by my time in New Mexico. I’m so excited to release these prints in my shop and it feels good to see the inspiration that I found on the other side of the country now framed and hanging on the walls of my home. They remind me that time spent in nature can return us to our deepest selves.

They also remind me that the tiniest spark of an idea, whether it’s found in a book or memory or story or piece of art, can lead me to new places.

They can set me off on a pilgrimage to right where I am supposed to be.

I’m deliberative. I know this, but like so many things, I will forget. When things start to move too quickly, I spin out and stall. The world, as it does, keeps whirling around me and I try to keep up. Another day, another post, another missed opportunity. And yet, I also know this: I thrive in slowness. In taking time.

I am always the one lingering behind the group to take another photograph, not quite ready to move on. The first draft comes in a rush, but then I obsess over the words, reworking and plodding along until it finally feels ready. I love being in deep conversation with a friend, when time slows and all that matters is our stories being woven together, taking turns listening and being heard. In these moments I tune in to my analog mind, settle inside the stillness, slowness, and quiet. I know all this.

But then I forget. 

I fall prey to the shaking, hurtling, hustling, freight train that is this algorithm-driven, continuous news-cycle world. I get lost scanning, refreshing, scrolling. I start listening to the constant buzz of the never-ending digital song. I get stuck, my record spins too slowly, and I’m instantly behind, buffering and processing.

And the thing is, I know I can’t keep up. I know it’s moving at a pace that wasn’t designed for me. For any of us. I know I’ll always feel like I’m just waking up, blurry-eyed and shuffling. But my phone? My phone is always wide awake. Always delivering and notifying. Always ready to get under my skin and gain direct access to my insecurities and doubts.

I'm finally — and of course, slowly — accepting that slow is my natural speed. You don’t want me at your blackjack table. I’ll mess everything up, I’ll slow it all down as I get lost in the table rules and the counting. I was the kid in the third-grade math class failing to complete the timetables within the given time. I could do it. I could work my way through the page and finish the addition or subtraction. I just needed more time. I just wanted my teacher to put down the stopwatch and tell it to me in a story, hand it to me in a book. I wanted her to use words and description and language. Because if you give it to me in numbers, I’m lost trying to translate a language I don’t understand.

But even words can come to me slowly, particularly in conversation. I need time to formulate a thought. Like Joan Didion, I need to string out a series of words on a page to finally understand what I think. I need to write in order to know myself.

But does everything need to be fast? Does everything need to be disposable and new? When I find something good, I want to dwell on it. Do a deep dive. I want to put eight books on hold from the library, and I want to stack them up on the table and slowly look through them, one page at a time. I want to play the same record over and over. Settle down into it and notice new rhythms and feelings. Listen until my least favorite song suddenly comes alive, the notes settling into the new grooves that I had to wear down with each listen.

And this is also true: I can get too obsessed. I can become fixated at the peril of my other interests, letting my previous obsessions drop and scatter, littering the floor around me. I’ll dwell on the current shiny thing, replay the record and ruminate over it. I will play it until the songs start to enter my dreams, signaling that I am finally ready to take the record off the player and return it to its sleeve. I don’t have the next one ready to go, but I’ll wait for it. I’ll try things out, impatient, certain that I missed out on something. I’ll do my best to conjure up the next bit of magic, desperate for the next thing that will dig into me, clutching and begging, but it’s nowhere to be found. 

These are the hard times. Starting another book and stopping it, then another and another. I try but it’s impossible to latch on to the story, the characters, the sentence structure. The music won’t sink in. The notes bang against something inside me that I can’t quite name. In this in-between space, I’m adrift and restless, impatient and grasping. The paintings don’t work. The words don’t come. The music is off-key. Everything feels harder than it did before.

And in those moments — or days, or weeks, or months — I start worrying that my thoughts aren’t my own. I worry they are just dubbed versions of other people’s creations. I start worrying that my thoughts, my writing, my brushstrokes are all sad cover songs of something someone else said or did or believed or created. It might be enough to make me turn the music off completely, to just scroll and stare at a screen.

But if I set my phone down, I’ll remember that good things take time.  And if I keep paying attention, I’ll eventually allow myself to be astonished. 

If I pull another book off of the pile, or open up my sketchbook, or go for a walk with nothing but the sounds of the neighborhood and the birds and the wind in my ears. If I allow myself to laugh, to uncoil, to turn off the outside world. Then maybe the record will start playing at the right speed. The notes will fall into their familiar patterns, beautiful again.

If I stop trying to catch up and instead lean into the slowness, I can tune back in to my own rhymes and rhythms. I can listen to my own slow, cascading thoughts and impulses, rather than try to rush them. My influences and creative lineage can spread out on the table in front of me, piled up like my current stack of library books, and I’ll be reassured. I'll relax and allow myself to put on another record, turn another page, look around. Worry isn’t getting me anywhere, so instead I'll drop the needle and let the music play again and make space for the notes to fall in. The next bit of wonder will arrive and I’ll be grateful. I’ll be content again, lost inside my analog mind.

Why photography?

Photography has become an integral part of my creative practice. I use it to gather inspiration, document my days, and to capture the scenes and places that move me. This is true during ordinary days at home, but it’s also true while traveling. I love capturing moments and places — even just the light of that particular moment — and bringing the photographs back home to my studio. Many are used as reference photographs for my painting practice,  but most remain just personal momentos of a specific place and time and memory. They combine together to form my own personal archive. 

But then there are some photographs that feel more stand-alone, more unique in how they capture a place and a point in time. I don’t feel compelled to paint these images because they already feel complete. My attempts to transform them through paint surely wouldn’t tell the story of that place better than the photograph itself. They also seem to represent more than just my own personal experience. Instead, they feel more general and my hope is that others can also relate to them and respond to the captured feeling or place. This has become particularly true of my photographs of trees.

Why trees?

I’ve had this black and white photograph of a Joshua tree in my living room for years, and it’s become a personal favorite. I love its striking simplicity, and when I was thinking through different ideas for a print release, the thought of expanding that print into a broader collection of tree-themed photographs made perfect sense. I’ve been home this past year without the rejuvenating energy that traveling and exploring can bring. It’s left me feeling less connected to nature and these tree photographs have been a way to counter that feeling, to create my own forest, if only on the wall.

I’ve also been thinking about how I’m happiest when I’m in the woods. Put me on a tree-lined trail and my harder edges instantly start to soften. If you are on the trail ahead of me and you turn back, you’ll surely find a small smile on my face (but only if it isn’t hidden by my camera). I love cities too — the museums, the restaurants, the buildings, the distinctly different neighborhoods — but if I have to pick, I’ll choose the woods. I’ll choose pine needles and fresh air and birch trees and the birds flickering from one limb to the next. And when the sun is low in the sky and its halo of light fragments out through the branches in every direction, I can promise that I will be stopping to take a photograph because I have to try to bring a little bit of that light — that mood — back home. 

Each of the twelve prints in this collection represents a distinct moment and place, but more importantly, they represent a feeling. Some highlight individual trees. Some represent a grouping of trees and the woods that give this collection its name. Some are very detailed, while others are more simple. There are flashes of sun projecting out through the branches, there are dramatic silhouettes, and the warmth and comfort of being surrounded by the woods. 

My love of the woods started back in childhood. I grew up in a green house surrounded by towering, jagged, old oak trees. My parents still live in that house, and every time I visit I take a moment to look up at those trees with their limbs reaching high into the sky, either bare and lined with frost or flush with shimmering green leaves. Regardless of the season, the trees are as familiar as old friends. 

While growing up, I spent countless hours with the neighborhood kids playing in the ravine that lined our yard. That small little valley held an overflowing bouquet of trees that we could weave through and explore under. I loved walking along the tiny creek that flowed at the bottom, trying to imagine who might have walked along that path before me. The floor of our pieced-together old tree house still sits up in one of those trees all these years later. Those trees are as much a part of my feeling of home as the house itself.

I think we all have trees that represent our own personal landmarks. I have those oak trees that surrounded the house where I grew up. Or the tall pine tree standing over the spot where my grandparents’ house once was. Or the birch tree that angled across the backyard of my first house. While gathering these photographs together, I’ve thought about how important trees are to our own personal well-being, but also to the planet. They represent life itself.

I hope you find something in this photograph collection that resonates with you. Maybe there is an image that reminds you of your past travels or your own personal tree landmarks. And I’d love to hear about the trees that remain in your memories, the trees and forests and woods that have lined your path. 

I’ll end by sharing a link to One Tree Planted, a great organization that I’ve supported because I love their reforestation mission — one dollar equals one tree planted — and their answer to the same question I asked above: Why trees?). 

Progress // forward or onward movement toward a destination; to develop to a higher, better, or more advanced stage

I can get overwhelmed with the idea of progress, particularly when it comes to my creative practice. When I think about progress, it’s often framed in my mind as something I haven’t achieved yet — the lack of progress or the pressure to finally make some progress. Because I often find myself focusing on the big end goals — the markers on the distant horizon — I can let my worries around not having reached the “advanced stage” in the definition above overshadow the smaller, incremental, and more practical steps that I need to take to get there. 

This tendency to focus too much on the end result feels like setting a goal to run a marathon when I haven’t been running for a year. The ground I need to cover from my current state to the end goal can keep me from even putting on my running shoes. All that distance to make up becomes its own form of friction and I find myself resistant to simply sitting down and doing the work. Focusing on the progress that needs to be made can also feel restricting because I feel like I must stick to a straight line of diligent effort and productivity to reach it, rather than the more meandering line that my creative process more naturally follows. 

I certainly don’t fall into this pattern all of the time — but focusing on the outcome rather than the journey has definitely become a recurring theme for me. It can lead to resistance and procrastination, but it can also keep me from seeing the important milestones I’m reaching along the way. I’ve often been told, whether it was while playing sports or at work, that I’m a hard worker. I would sometimes think: really, me?

And yet, if I took a moment to actually pay attention, I’d have noticed that it was true. But the “advanced stages” that I hadn’t reached weighed heavier on the scale than the stages I did reach. Lofty goals can be good, but if I’m only considering things to be a success if I reach the predetermined and fixed goal that I set at the starting line, I worry that I’ve missed out on a whole lot of good stuff that happened along the way. The result of the hard work (or even the work itself) doesn’t get noticed if I’m still only focused on the finish line.

I’m not against goal setting — I think it’s important and necessary to have a clear direction and set of goals to work toward. But I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I navigate setting goals for the year (and years) ahead. I’ve had some of the same lofty goals for many years now — goals around painting and writing — so when I measure myself against them it can be discouraging because I feel like I haven’t accomplished enough. It’s even made me wonder — in brief flashes — if it’s time to revise and focus on something else. But those same goals have been with me, whispering and lingering, for years and that is not by accident. It’s because they tie back to something more important than any goal or milestone: they represent how I want to spend my life. 

And so I’m realizing that having that goal — that distant, defined marker on the horizon — isn’t incorrect. There is just the risk that it can become a mirage if I don’t take actionable steps, day after day, again and again, to reach it. That is obvious to say, but I think shifting my mindset from focusing on the distance I still need to travel will keep the resulting resistance — the “lack of progress” — from becoming its own challenge. 

So this year, instead of focusing on the fixed goal at the end of the journey and all the progress yet to be made, I’m choosing to shift the lens just slightly. This year I’m focusing on the progression.

Progression // the process of developing or moving gradually towards a more advanced state; a series; a passage or movement from one note or chord to another

Reading that definition already makes me feel calmer, less worried, and less hurried. I love the musical definition the most (a passage or movement from one note or chord to another) and the idea that everything we are doing — or perhaps even not doing — is just an individual beat of a larger song, the gradual but profound movement from one note to the next.

The more common phrase is progress not perfection, which is also a good motto, but the subtle shift to progression not progress feels particularly important to me right now. Yes, the end goals can feel far away, but by tracking my daily, repeated effort and by putting on my creative running shoes each day, the gradual, consistent effort will add up. Suddenly I’m much closer to finishing the marathon than I realize.

It’s becoming apparent to me that it’s more important to truly understand how I want to spend my precious time — the true reason behind all those goals I set in the first place — and then eliminate the barriers I put between myself and actually just doing the work, including my tendency to focus too much on the end result rather than the journey of the work itself. Because it’s all about just doing the work. 

When I think about my core values and the activities that bring me the most contentment, it becomes extremely apparent why I set the lofty end goals in the first place: to do the things I want to do. To do the things that bring meaning to my life. To paint. To write. To take photographs. To weave together images into something new. As a result, the most important thing for me this year is going to be the progression, the very act and momentum of creating, and the joy of passing from one note to the next again and again. The end goal is still important (and it still might be far away), but it’s really the work itself and the day-to-day progression that matters anyway. 

The tempo might change, but the overall momentum of the work — the act of digging up the gold — will allow me to periodically pause and find that I am moving closer to those goals on the horizon, even if the road I’ve followed is more of a meandering path than a straight highway (and maybe precisely because it is). A detour now and then shouldn’t be avoided at all costs, because the joy of the overall progression — the passing from note to note and painting to painting and sentence to sentence — might result in me stumbling upon some beautiful scenery I otherwise would have missed. I can’t just look ahead, I also have to look around.

Even now as I type this, as I sit comfortably in a chair in my living room, and as I feel unbelievably lucky to be coming out the other side of this year still intact, I look up and part of me expects the furniture to be rearranged. I’m surprised to find that the whole room hasn’t been turned upside down. Why wouldn’t the couch suddenly find itself on the ceiling? It’s still 2020, after all. So in the face of everything this year has brought, I have started to allow myself to be grateful for the smallest of things, like furniture that is still positioned where I left it. Even if all I’m thankful for is gravity, at least it’s something. At least it’s a start.

As it gets colder here and we move deeper into winter, the ice still feels very thin. It still feels like everything, at any instant, could crash through to the frigid water below. And yet I feel fortunate to be here slowly counting down the final seconds of this long, hard year with many things to be grateful for. Family and friends. Health and healing. Our home. Walks through the neighborhood. A partner who does his best to make me laugh, every single day. The work that got done and the work still to do. A camera and a sketchbook. And the knowledge that there are still many things to be improved (myself included). 

I’ve always loved pausing at the end of the year to plan and envision the year ahead, but I’ve been struggling with that exercise this year. I don’t know where the resistance is coming from exactly. Maybe it’s the after-effects of a year filled with heightened levels of uncertainty. Maybe it feels pointless to try to map out a plan for the coming year when the previous one was literally turned on its head, a year when it felt like we couldn’t even count on gravity anymore. When it felt conceivable that the living room furniture really could start floating to the ceiling.

As someone who likes to solve problems, this year pointed out again and again that I don’t know all the answers. On more than one occasion it left me feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, defeated. But I’m discovering that asking the right questions might be just as important as having all the answers. So I have to keep asking and searching and hoping that some answers will start bubbling up to the surface.

I’ve kept various iterations of notebooks, logbooks, and journals over the years and it is always a peculiar feeling seeing my past laid bare on the page in front of me, and in my own handwriting. A few days ago I found myself looking through some old notebooks and I was reminded of a specific question that I routinely asked myself during that particular period of my life. It was about seven years ago and I was feeling an acute sense that life was somehow slipping away. I felt both stagnant and restless, firmly entrenched in my comfort zone. I felt like I wasn’t noticing enough, trying hard enough, exploring enough. So I started routinely asking myself a question: What is important? 

It was a seemingly simple question but its context could shift depending on my mood or the intention. What is important this month? What is important this week? What is important right now? Each week I listed three or four key areas of my life that felt most important. I tried not to overthink this (not always easy for me). Instead, I’d quickly list the things I wanted to focus on and appreciate more. As I look back at that notebook now, they tended to be larger, overarching themes. Relationships. Fitness. Cooking. Learning. Then I’d write out some intentions and things I wanted to do within each topic. Even if they were just things or ideas or attitudes or quotes that I wanted to remember.

In this particular moment of feeling stuck and unable to easily identify specific goals or plans for the new year, I think this approach will be a good prompt to take with me into 2021. Most importantly, it will simply be a place to start. It will help me confront these days (and the past) (and the future) with curiosity rather than a fixed set of intentions or resolutions. So I’ll start by asking myself that seemingly simple question. 

What is important? 

I’m curious to see what comes up. I don’t think there will be any big surprises, and there will surely even be some goals and projects waiting for me in the answers. I’ll try to follow the responses like guideposts, my own north stars. I’ll try this even though it really is all uncertain — because it all is — and with the understanding that it’s okay that I don’t know all the answers.

Then I’ll pause and I’ll ask myself the question again.

This feeling of freedom and the ability to literally turn the page each time I sat down at my desk became a safe harbor. My sketchbook practice allowed me to have one small part of this chaotic, fragmented time under control, and it provided some much-needed, quiet relief from worry. The turbulent waters kept churning, but the habit of finding this peaceful time to focus on landscapes, distant horizons, and soft colors was its own form of comfort. 

After completing my most recent sketchbook, I decided it was time to focus my energy on painting outside of my sketchbook. I wish I could report that this transition has gone seamlessly and that I constantly paint with the same freedom and ease that I find in my sketchbook pages. But the real story is more complicated and requires some untangling, even as I continue to actively work through it. On top of that, my goal is to release a collection of paintings later this year, which I know is adding another layer of pressure. The stakes feel higher, and that can be both good and bad.

Now when I sit down to paint, I grab my block of watercolor paper rather than my sketchbook. Yes, it’s still paper, but mentally it feels completely different. The paper is more expensive and therefore there is an underlying sense of urgency not to waste it. Working with watercolor on paper doesn’t allow me to simply keep working into it; I can’t paint over it and start fresh in the same way that is possible with other opaque mediums. A single brushstroke can end up being one too many.

Fortunately, there are days when I do feel that same, familiar ease and lack of pressure that lives in my sketchbook pages. There are days when my brushstrokes feel both intentional and spontaneous, which is the best type of brushstroke. But other days have brought overworked corners and muddy colors as I try hard — too hard — to find that same easy rhythm. When these more discouraging painting sessions happen, I keep reminding myself that the painting process is not always going to be easy. So I keep sitting down at my painting desk to try again. It’s not the same in that I’m no longer literally turning the sketchbook page, but I’m trying to approach it with the same spirit of forgetting and starting over. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

I also try to remind myself that I learn something each time, even when the painting doesn’t go as planned or it ends up in the discard pile. I focus on the practice in art practice, and in that way, I’m trying to take a deep breath and step back into the ease and freedom that my sketchbook always brings. Yes, the paper I’m painting on is more expensive than my sketchbook pages, which does its best to get under my skin and into my head, but it’s still the same process of interpreting an image on the paper. When I peel back the tension and grumbling energy that a less-than-ideal painting session can bring, it still lights me up inside. It still makes my day better, even if the painting didn’t work out.

Meanwhile, almost without me noticing, the pile of paintings for the final collection continues to grow. Yes, the discard pile also gets taller, but I remind myself that it also represents its own form of progress. Regardless of the end result, the most important part is done: I painted.

One other thing I’ve known (and forgotten and remembered and forgotten again) is that my loose, abstract, landscape paintings often need a counter-balance. I need to paint some hard lines and detail so that I can free myself up again. If I don’t release that yearning for control and structure by painting some straight lines and fine details, they start to creep into my landscape paintings. That is a recipe for failure because it causes me to lose the free, loose strokes of color that I love so much in my landscape paintings.

Last week this brought me full circle back to my sketchbook practice. My previous sketchbook was filled with landscape paintings, but I decided it was time to start a new one focused on one of my other favorite muses: old buildings. My hope is that I can release all the hard lines, structure, and detail in those pages, which will then free me up as I continue painting landscapes. Ironically (or not), the first painting in that sketchbook wasn’t a success. Although there were a few details I liked, my overall drawing was hurried and the scale ended up being slightly off. But it was just my sketchbook.

I’ll turn the page and try again.

Thoughts on Excavating my Creativity

My creative energy went a bit dormant this summer, and in trying to wrangle it back into being, I’ve resisted and sometimes questioned the idea that it was still there to be found. But more recently, as I’ve felt the traction and hope of progress, I’ve started to think of my creative spirit (energy, flow, whatever you want to call it) as buried gold. The biggest realization was that, yes, it’s always there, but there will always be a varying amount of dirt covering this buried treasure. At times it will just be a light dusting that I can easily wipe away each day. Those are the productive, energized, best-of-days. But at other times I’ll lose sight of it and I’ll need a shovel and a lot of heavy lifting to find it again. Those are the times that I feel lost creatively and spend far too much time in my overthinking (INTJ) head. I think rather than act, and that just adds more dirt to the pile.

So yes, the dirt will always be there to some degree. That can be impossible to forget because the dirt can feel so heavy and impenetrable. The trick is to remember that the treasure is still there too. The gold may be buried, but it’s there, waiting for me to find it. 

The excavation process can be hard work. At times more dirt gets added than is taken away until it feels too hard, or maybe even a little hopeless. Sometimes this is for obvious reasons like pandemics or other major life events or disruptions. And sometimes it sneaks up for reasons that aren’t explainable. The season just changes and suddenly the branches are bare and the ground is frozen and I worry it’s gone and buried forever. During these times the tools become covered in dust as the effort and routine fall away. But - but! - the gold is still there. It just might take longer to find, especially if I stopped looking. 

Once I start digging again I might find that I need a bigger shovel. Or I might need some help. But the real unexpected gift of these times is that with all the digging and searching, I just might find some unexpected gemstones along the way. Some of the clumps of dirt might sprout and bloom like tulips in spring. 

I feel that way now. I mentioned in my last newsletter that I was in need of an attention and creativity reboot, and I spent the months of July and August searching for where to dig. I started in my sketchbook and my journal — the two places that always return me to myself. I also stumbled around and found some new books, revisited some of my favorite websites and blogs, and started using a new planner to reestablish some daily habits. 

Creativity can be a mysterious thing, but I do believe in the daily effort. I know there is momentum in doing the work, and I also know it’s a lot easier than my busy, ruminating mind likes to think it is. Sometimes it’s as easy and simple as just returning to the paintbrush or pen or keyboard without any grand plans in mind. Action helps turn off my thoughts and worries so I can make progress, even if it is meandering, drifting progress. 

And the good news is that I finally feel like I’m getting somewhere. I’m starting to see some flecks of gold and they are reminding me in that chest-filling way of the reasons I keep looking, even when it feels hard or hopeless. John Steinbeck wrote that “work is the only good thing”, and when it comes to creativity and any type of artistic endeavor, I can’t argue with him. 

I tend to be someone who can also get lost in over-work and burnout. I can spiral into worry, focusing on the imagined end result and the infinite possibilities rather than keeping things simple and focusing on the process and the continued act of creating. I think the key is smart, consistent, daily work. I need to keep the dust from settling with steady work but without going too far and causing a windstorm. 

Now my goal is to find ways to integrate some form of creative work into my daily routine, even if it’s small. In a perfect world I would paint every day, but my schedule doesn’t allow for huge blocks of time, particularly during the week. But it’s still a goal worth striving for and with time I think the small, repeat, daily progress will help me to dig up not just the gold but the hidden gemstones too. 

And I love to stay home. 

I’ve been thinking about this contradiction a lot these past few months while here at home. My natural tendency is to be a homebody, but in normal times it was balanced out by frequent travel and exploring closer to home. Although I am most content at home, I am happiest when I’m hiking in the woods or looking out over a big, beautiful landscape.

I also love the feel of the hunt as I drive down empty country roads and small-town main streets in search of something interesting to photograph. The simplest way to say it is that I love looking. A new building, new town, new trail. The next view around the bend. I feel like a collector, picking up little treasures that will eventually converge into another story of my own making. These activities and the ability to capture them with my camera — and later with paint — return me to my true elemental core. I’m a little girl out exploring in the woods again, with nothing but time and my imagination.

And yet, I also enjoy being at home with no particular place to go. Over on my About page I describe myself as a stationary rambler because although I love to travel, most of the time I’m right here at home, escaping into other worlds without leaving these walls. I use the images and memories from my time out exploring and edit and refine them into something new. New paintings. New photographs on my wall. New ideas and projects. This was my process before the arrival of this new world, but it has become even more true now that the rambling part of the equation is no longer an option. 

Once the initial shock of stay-at-home orders and world-turned-upside-down uncertainty subsided, I’ve managed to settle into a new routine. It’s included focused work hours, journaling every morning, and daily walks with my dog around our neighborhood. I’ve also been seeking out solace in my sketchbook, sorting through my back catalog photographs, and planning new painting projects. We are all coping and living with this new reality, and it’s not lost on me that we’ve all been handed different realities, hardships, responsibilities, and curveballs. I know that not everyone has the luxury of routine and focused work right now, and I feel grateful every day.

I also can’t help but think of this new reality as one giant, overwhelming contradiction. For example, during this time of social distancing we can somehow be physically farther away from the people we love, but also somehow closer and more connected to them. Being at home all this time has helped me feel more grounded and calm in many ways, but there are still times that feel overwhelming and surreal and uncertain and just too much. It’s like all of life’s metaphors and lessons are compounding and screaming at us all at once with no easy answers. And yet, somehow, there is still goodness out there to find and appreciate. Maybe that is the biggest contradiction of all.

As one day of this new reality piles on top of the next, I’ve loved being home but also feel conflicted about having so much time here. I lived alone for most of my adult life until I met my husband in my late 30s, and I’ve been thinking about those days a lot. I had a nice, tiny house I could call my own, and I had the freedom to wander any place I desired or I could choose to just stay home. Those days were perfect for my independent spirit, but I also settled into the comfort of home too much. I traveled and spent time with my family and friends — time that I’ll be always be grateful for — but meanwhile I stayed tethered to the safety of home, often reluctant to venture out and meet new people or risk the possibility of having my heart broken. It took time to chip away the shell I built around myself all those years and to finally wander out into the unknown. 

That’s a whole separate story to unpack, but it has me thinking that I’m doing something similar right now. The prospect of travel and adventure is turning into a distant memory and its return remains uncertain. And so I have no choice but to sink into the security and comfort of home. A gift and privilege in so many ways, but I am starting to feel a quiet ache to wander again. I don’t want to settle in here so much that the outside world feels completely removed and just a far-fetched idea that can never be again. But even my desire to travel and explore and look again exists alongside an underlying anxiousness about when it will really be okay to be back out in the world again.

There are no easy answers or solutions, and frankly I don’t feel ready to venture out yet. So in the moments (or hours or days) when I spin out into worry and what-ifs, I try to stop and remember that eventually the equation will balance out and we’ll all be able to wander again. I’ll be back on a mountainside taking photographs. Or I’ll be standing on a quiet street looking at an old building, wondering what stories it has to tell. I’ll be roaming and looking and collecting new images again.

Then I’ll know that the outside world is still there. It will always be calling me to slip out of my shell, asking me to come back out and wander. 

And then I’ll come back home, happy to be rambling in place once again.

Here in Minnesota, everything becomes amplified and a little more urgent in the winter. We hurry from place to place through the cold air. We unravel layer after layer when we get inside. We shorten our gaits, careful not to slip, knowing there is always ice waiting for a careless step. We wait to see if the roads will allow us to travel. At times the frigid temperatures can literally take our breath away. And if that wasn’t enough, the sun can disappear behind heavy gray clouds for days on end, eventually reappearing to make the sky bluer than you remember and everything a little more bearable.

For all of these reasons, I’ve never been a winter person. Summer is my favorite season. More precisely, early summer is my favorite as the days are still getting longer and the return of cold and snow and shortened days feels so very far away. But I’m learning to embrace these winter days more and more. It’s become my time to hibernate without the nagging feeling that I should be outside doing something. I can stay inside and paint or read or cook and I don’t have to worry that I’m not taking full advantage of the fleeting days of summer. I’ve also noticed that I also become more introspective in winter. The cold days are when I most want to write stories and characters like Alice Munro. It’s when I want to open up a notebook and start dreaming up stories of women making their way through their days. It’s when I want to grab onto little seeds of my grandmothers’ stories and spin them up into broader fiction. The cold makes everything, even ideas and inspiration, feel closer and more tangible.

I’m now a dog owner for the first time in my life and our frequent walks have given me an excuse to get outside nearly every day of the year, if only briefly, and even on the coldest of days. I’ve unexpectedly discovered that some of my favorite walks are following a new snowfall when you can almost hear the cold air cracking around you, and when the sun shines brighter than you thought was possible and the fresh blanket of snow literally sparkles with light. It takes me back to my childhood when we would put on our snowsuits and moon boots and drag our sleds to our own little neighborhood sledding hill. We lived on the edge of a small town in a tiny neighborhood with a handful of houses scattered out on a hill, surrounded by trees and ravines and a field that ran away to the east, flat all the way to the horizon. With only a few kids spread out among the houses, we were left to explore on our own. In winter we had our own slope of a hill that we would sled down over and over until we would finally drag ourselves back home. 

Now as an adult, my dog gets me outside again. Out into the snow and cold, happy to be outdoors, and even happier to then return to the warmth of home. One of my favorite things during these walks is to take photographs of frequently visited locations along the creek near our house. I can fall through time as I stand in the same spots, again and again, pausing for a moment to take a photograph. Day after day, one after the other. Marking time. 

When it’s 6 degrees or the temperatures stay below zero for weeks at a time, it can be hard to imagine that there were ever lush green leaves on the trees or that in a few months the heat of the day will keep me inside just as much as the cold. But then I remember those earlier photographs taken during previous seasons, during barren spring days when the snow was gone and everything was brown. I can see the branches bowed low, heavy with August leaves, skimming the top of the creek. And I remember when the first trees started to turn yellow, reminding me that, yes, winter is coming back around again.

I know I’m not alone when I say that the act of taking pictures has become completely embedded in my life. I see something interesting and it’s become automatic to reach for my phone and snap a photo. I do this when I’m walking my dog, traveling, or just walking through the house and happen to notice a particular way the light is falling on the dining room wall. It’s how I document my days and it’s a way to capture the moments, places, and patterns that I don’t want to forget. As a painter, it’s also how I gather inspiration and reference materials, and it’s become an indispensable component of my artistic process. Photography is how I taught myself about composition and color and how I first truly discovered the power of telling a story with just an image. But most importantly, it’s how I connect to my life. It’s how I say: I was here. I am here.

But photography does a lot more than that. It offers a visual connection to our past and to our families, to our childhood memories and the great-grandparents we never met. Photographs provide a glimpse into our parents’ lives before they were our parents. They can remind us of the fun nights out with friends in college. They are a link back to our first house, our first car, our first day of school. Our lives fold backward through photo album pages and the years stack up in shoeboxes of old photographs. Good times, bad times, meaningful moments, the drudgery of daily life. It's all there waiting on a piece of paper, in a photo album, on a computer screen, or on our phones.

I thought of all this while prepping for the launch of these camera prints. I think of photographs as a link to our past, and the act of taking photographs has also become one of my most treasured daily creative acts. Yes, I painted these cameras because I love the way these old cameras look, but I also love the impact of photography on my life.

As my phone fills up with images, it can become overwhelming to sort through them all, never mind the large catalog on my computer that I'm constantly trying to organize. Although I love film and would love to shoot with it more, the ease of digital photography (and the camera being right in my phone) has allowed taking photographs to become another way of journaling. I can capture all the things and people and places I encounter and I can gather them together as proof and remembrance of these days and months and years that fly by too quickly. I add them to my journal using the Day One app. And I make books of vacation photos and yearly books that encompasses both the big and the small moments from the previous 365 days, because yes the big moments matter, but the small moments can matter more. I also file my photographs away for future reference, hoping they’ll spark an idea for a future painting.

So with the release of my online shop, I'm launching these camera prints back out into the world. I know they are just my paintings of cameras - nothing profound or revolutionary - but these paintings have become my own love letters to photography. And most importantly, they remind me to go pick up my own camera. To go take a photograph.

Yes, the changing colors are beautiful and they create a spectacular show that forces us to just stop, for once, and actually look. The lush, monotonous green that once lined the river valley transforms into rich color, varying shades, and alternating hues. If you are lucky and the sun happens to be out, the fluttering yellow leaves become their own light source, aglow with sunlight, daring you to not pay attention. Even the drive to work becomes more interesting. Walking the dog becomes both colder and more eye-catching.

As much as I can be wowed by it, I also rebel against fall. It can contain some of the most gorgeous, bright, crisp days of the year, typically amplified by their placement within the strung together days of endless, heavy, gray skies, fading flowers, and cleaned out garden beds. But I can’t forget that fall remains the prelude to winter. The hints of winter start to creep in before I feel like I’ve sufficiently appreciated autumn. A glance out the window in the morning finds frost on the rooftops and the heavy jackets are out of storage and it brings a chill that creeps into my bones and doesn’t ever truly thaw until sometime in April or May. And in early November those months feel a lifetime away. This fall in particular has been colder than usual, as though we’ve skipped ahead right to the edge of winter.

My rebellion against fall has also found its way into my paintings. My ideal color palette has always veered toward shades of blue, pink, and - my favorite - payne’s grey. So although I have no trouble admiring the yellow trees spiked with ochre and brown each October, it has rarely seeped into my landscape paintings. The brightness and boldness of the changing leaves can overwhelm me. My eye, particularly when painting, is drawn to softness and subtlety. But this year I’ve found myself falling in love and painting with some new colors in my watercolor palette: yellow grey, jaune brilliant #2, terra ercolano. 

And - probably not surprisingly - I feel more grounded with these paintings. I typically paint from my photographs. Although I admire and love the idea of plein air painting, I honestly prefer the comfort of a thermostat and the lack of wind and harsh sun in my studio.

Painting in this way allows me to dig back through my photographs and find any type of landscape, at any time of year, to inspire a painting. Because I’m not tied to the views outside, I can travel to any place and any season. But I’ve enjoyed painting these fall scenes this year while the season is present, and quickly fades, outside my window. I think this practice of embedding my landscape paintings, even to just a small degree, within the colors and moods of the current season will stay with me. Up next is winter. Its cool blues and negative space await.

So while I was fascinated to learn more about her upbringing, her music, and her long career, it was the stories she shared about writing and performing and finding her voice that caused me to stop and turn over the corner of page after page. There were so many things I wanted to be able to find and read again one day, but there was one page in particular that completely stopped me and made me find a pen to write passages down. 

She was discussing the act of performing for an audience, particularly audiences that aren’t completely present or connecting with her performance. And she started the chapter with the following:

Someone once told me to perform to the six percent of the audience who are poets.

In this new social media world of likes and followers and the quest to get more and more, this resonated with me completely. You can’t please everyone, whether the crowd is big or small. This also resonated because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about who the audience is for my paintings. My goal isn’t to cater to trends or passing fads. My paintings will evolve and change over time — or at least I sure hope so. And I hope that they will always reflect me and my experience at the time they were painted, but my bigger hope is that my work represents a continuum of time. The past and the present and the mysteries of what may lie ahead. So after reading that sentence, my dream audience came into stark relief and it became perfectly clear: she has the heart of a poet.

This idea also reminds me of a distant memory. I’ve wanted to be a writer and an artist for as long as I can remember. I was a book worm and was constantly filling up notebooks with drawings and words and terrible poems. I was probably in the third or fourth grade when I decided I wanted to write a book. I mentioned it to a classmate and she suggested we both write stories and then read what the other person had written. We both put our heads down and wrote a few paragraphs. I remember being so excited to hand her the sheet of paper with my story and to hear what she would say. I have no idea what I wrote but I do remember there was something about the sun. It was either rising or setting and I longed to capture it on the page. I’m quite certain it was melodramatic and plotless, but I wrote it and that felt important. I had accomplished something. I had written. So when I asked my classmate later that day what she thought of it, her response broke my heart. I can still see the rows of desks around us and the fluorescent light and the green chalkboard on the far wall. I can hear her telling me as she barely turned around in the desk chair in front of me that she hadn’t bothered to read it. She started the first sentence — the one about the sun, I’m sure — but it was boring so she stopped reading. It was not the type of critique I was looking for (not that I knew what a critique even was). But it stuck with me, clearly. It’s boring. I didn’t read it. 

Those thoughts have lingered with me for years, and I know I’m not the only person that allowed this type of feedback to become part of the stories they continue to carry with them. I was no child prodigy writer, so I’m sure my classmate was actually right, but the experience, and countless others, embedded inside me, festering into a constant worry. Sharing creative work and the reaction (or non-reaction) is scary. But these days I try to remember that the act of creating in and of itself is the best part anyway. So I recognize that there will be a percentage of the crowd that finds my work boring. There will be a percentage that stops reading or looking or doesn’t follow me or sign up for my newsletter. But that’s ok. Because, at its core, I’m creating all of this for me anyway. For the warmth that can swell in my chest and the pangs of recognition that I feel when I find myself stumbling upon sentences or drawings or color combinations or patterns or paintings that speak to the poet inside me. So I’ll keep doing this creative work, and if my will holds, I’ll keep sharing it for the other poets in the audience.

That quote was on page 69 of my paperback copy of Composed. And as a sign of just how much richness and warmth and insight I found on all the pages, a bit further down that same page she offered up another quote worthy of stealing and adopting as my own personal mantra, this time from T Bone Burnett: 

Don’t stop working, just stop worrying.

It’s simple advice, but not easy to follow. I certainly haven’t been living by it. As the story above shows, I can and have let worry and other people’s opinions cloud my path and lull me into periods of silence. But if I know anything at all, I know this: I can change. I can get better. I can stop worrying.

And I can get to work.

Entering the abyss of writing into the internet feels… many things. Irrelevant, indulgent, maybe even a little ironic. Or is it too soon for irony and blogs? But I’m coming here, to this space, to make it my own and to toss out into the abyss some words and photographs and drawings and paintings. As someone with a pretty significant amount of insecurity regarding sharing just about anything publicly — I much prefer one-on-one conversations, preferably over some good food and a glass of wine — it feels counter-intuitive to add to the noise of the internet, particularly while I’m still grappling with the social media structure built around posting the best and most curated versions of ourselves (or in my case, my art) for an Instagram feed. I’m also trying to dial back the amount of time I spend mindlessly looking at and scrolling through the internet. Yet, here I am.

I’m still asking myself a lot of questions about this space. What will I share? How much will I write? How often? But I’ve decided to stop thinking and start doing. Surely I will figure it out along the way. The truth is that I’ve been thinking of doing this for quite a while and I have been resisting the urge, telling myself that I’m not ready. I thought I could only start once I finally realized exactly what I want to share. And then I came across a recent post from Austin Kleon where he quotes a line from Show Your Work. He suggests owning our own spaces online if we are interested in sharing our work and expressing ourselves. That made sense to me. Besides, it will be nice to share things here, in this quiet space, away from the noise and hearts of Instagram.

So today (tonight), somewhat on a whim, I begin with this first post. For now I plan to treat this like a notebook. A place to share work, write, tell stories with words and photographs and paintings. It will all unfold in some combination yet to be determined, just like all those empty notebooks I opened up as a kid and then slowly filled the pages with a steady rotation of pens, markers, everchanging ideas, and whims.