I painted Deadwood, above, for a solo present at Roberts Wesleyan College’s Davison Artwork Gallery. The work was an exploration of the marriage between God and gentleman as noticed in character.

At the time, I was imagining about how our errors impede the stream of existence. “But fallen branches can actually alter the course of a waterway,” my hydrologist buddy Ken Avery instructed me at the opening. It’s the butterfly impact designed apparent.

I’d hardly ever assumed about it like that.

Branches that fall into streams tend to collect other sticks into logjams. This particles can change the circulation of the river alone. There is terrific force holding this sort of river jams in put in truth, breaking a logjam is a thing best left to specialists as it can be incredibly harmful.

Deadwood is a metaphor for selections we’ve designed that appeared to forever hobble us. Sin and failure drop into our lives and mesh with other sins and failures. By the time we’re adults, we have a logjam of problems pushing a single in opposition to another. These start to define what we fully grasp to be our character or character. “She’s temperamental.”  “He is concerned of his personal shadow.” “Of study course he has a consuming trouble so did his father and grandfather.” None of these are real definitions of our characters, but the distortion induced by the unfortunate accretion of difficulties on problems.

The excellent lie of Satan is that just about every of us is uniquely and fatally flawed. Neither is accurate, of study course. Our sins are frequently typical, and we can appropriate our program as extended as we’re however respiration.

At the time I painted it, Deadwood seemed pretty unfinished, but this is a painting that predicted where I was heading as a painter. These will work make us not comfortable at the stage of generation, but they ring true above time. Which is the huge rationale why I’m not quick to clean out tough commences.

(By the way, an altered lifetime is not a ruined just one if this resonates with you, you might want to read this e-book.)

My 2024 workshops:

• Portray in Paradise: Rockport, ME, July 8-12, 2024.
• Sea & Sky at Schoodic, August 4-9, 2024.
• Discover your authentic voice in plein air: Berkshires, August 12-16, 2024.
• Art and Journey at Sea: Paint Aboard Schooner American Eagle, September 15-19, 2024.
• Immersive In-Particular person Workshop: Rockport, ME, October 7-11, 2024.