(At the end of this writing, you’ll see a video I reference. I enjoyed the entire thing, but the most helpful part came at the end - about minute 45 or so. Good stuff there, so skip to that minute if you need encouragement.)

I’ve had so little to offer this year.

It has been quiet with intermittent punches of bad news. The good parts seem miles and miles behind me now. I do think of them, though: the time in North Georgia with painting friends (and competitors!) and the more recent time with my wife in Santa Fe and Taos - those were good. Now the mornings are chilly, and the longer darkness asks me to learn lessons that I don’t want to learn right now. I don’t want to think about slowing down and being patient. I don’t want to ponder and pray over the punches of news in the darkness. I want to pray with the warm sun on my face and warm light on the falling leaves. I want to drive out somewhere and sit.

I have a lot to think about and a lot to do.

I recall Logan Maxwell Hagege commenting in a talk he gave earlier this year that the artist needs something to say (not a quote, but the gist of it…). Hearing that - which we’ve heard in many ways before - made my heart sink because I realized that I don’t have anything to say. I am a listener. A journal-keeper. I sit with the landscape and try to take in its language as it passes through me. Whatever I get from it isn’t really for anyone else, so I have thought about his saying that all year.

All.

Year.

All year I’ve thought about how to say something when I don’t want to say anything - I want the landscape to lead and the voice of peace and truth to come through somehow. What am I supposed to say? Life is precious? Don’t we know that? Nothing lasts forever? Hold your head up? Political/social commentary? Does anyone care what a rural Tennessean experiences while out West? I don’t think so. I don’t know anything. I am just making sketchy prayers that others sometimes see. What am I supposed to say to anyone with them? What if my point of view looks completely past and through the medium I use? What if I am an outsider to the machinations of the art world and have no idea how I fit in or if I need to at all?

Earlier this year, to get out of that mindset and to just get moving, I started a small body of work called Standard West: nothing with particularly deep meaning to me, just nice, standard, Western landscapes. I need the practice, and good things would come from making that body of work, so I started a few small ones (they will all be small to small-ish). Exercise. It’d be good for me.

At some point, a growing sadness about a loved one started squeezing, so painting became fractured and spotty, but when it gave forth its fruit in full, I didn’t paint for 75+ days.

Then, I got an invitation to a good show in Indianapolis (Vining Invitational), made two small, average works (I like one of the two), and mailed them. I tried to answer the call for the American Tonalist Society online show and failed to make a good entry (I submitted anyway, but I could not pull it together in time, so my entry is poor quality). Then, because this year’s harvest from the tree of misfortune was a bumper crop, we get more. More bitter fruit. It’s hard to see how painting can do any good at all when lives are being altered beyond the ability of mortals to affect them. Am I supposed to paint a lovely scene while a loved one’s life is on fire?

Then, another invitation. A really good one. A small part of an awesome thing is still awesome, and I get to be a small part of an awesome thing this year. That’s what I’m working on now - or trying to. Between the bitter harvest and the aforementioned line about having something to say constantly in my mind, I can’t get to a place of clarity. I have 14 days to submit three works, and not one is finished. I can’t get any ideas or clarity. I don’t like the forms I’m seeing, and I feel the need to keep it simple just to meet the deadline. I return to the Standard West stuff, and it’s alright, but I want more. I need more for this show.

So, I am going through references trying to recall why I stood there or made the photo, all the while hearing “I don’t have anything to say…” and thinking of the lives impacted by the sharp fruit of the tree of misfortune.

I am supposed to take that and make poems.

In 14 days.

I don’t know how much honesty I can excavate in two weeks with the other things taking up so much space in my mind, but I am closing this laptop, praying, sleeping, and getting up to try again after work.

I must recall that prayers are not passive and that Artkeeping is drawing a sword against materialistic despondency. It is resistance. No ground is given, even if no ground is gained this time.

Perhaps the work is not an escape, but a hunting ground.

Seen on Carrie Ballantyne’s Instagram story. Writer is @peregrinehonig

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO

The Lowlies, Cameron Knowler, Bellsburg (the songs of Rich Mullins), and a little bit of Thrasher by Brandon Flowers. I can’t really listen to lyrics while working, so Knowler’s guitar along with various ambient classical playlists are chosen while working. Knowler has been a very welcome find.

Thanks to Troy Oviedo, I found Cameron Knowler and C.W. Stoneking.