This woman is a worship leader at our church. She sings on stage but when not singing she sits on side row with her family. Today her son was intensely interested in a stretchy rope that he brought with him and spent a while sitting in front of her playing with it. She did a great job parenting him, using a nice combination of letting him do his thing with reminders to behave and pay attention. She didn’t enforce, just reminded.
Natalie in Church
I found myself in church sitting next to Natalie and her family from my community group. I usually don’t sit right next to people and if I do I certainly don’t usually draw them. But I know Natalie and I know that her whole family are church doodlers so I felt comfortable drawing her. When I painted the drawing later I didn’t remember the exact color scheme except she was in light clothes and there was pink here and there. So, that is what i imagined and I chose the colors.
Eight Angry Saints
When I am sitting in church, cafe and waiting room and have finished a drawing I often will not start a new one from observation. I will just start making something up and draw that. I will often just start with a long line and then let that tell me where to go. The woman’s hair in the front was the first long line. I did that one then just started repeating the shape of the face and the hair, adding in variations just to see what expressions and looks I could come up with. I added halos and all of a sudden they were saints.
Scene in a Museum
Sometimes I see someone’s face and something stands out that I am attracted to. In this case I just happened to glimpse a woman with a very distinct nose. I wasn’t able to see much more of her so instead of trying to draw her from life I just started with the curve of her nose as I remembered it and made up most the rest. I also remembered her hair style and incorporated an stylized version of that as well. When I draw from memory and with no exact reference I will often turn the person into a museum piece of some sort. In this case she became a sculptural bust. But she was on the right side face left and that left a big blank space on the right. So I thought it would be fun to draw her looking at a painting of the rest of herself.
Preacherman
We had a guest preacher a few weeks back. He was a snappy dresser so I started to draw him. However, I didn’t really like his message, it was too preachy, formulaic and simplistic for my taste.
Mindscapes
This woman was in front of me at church. Once I finished drawing her profile I lost interest in drawing the rest of the church scene so I started making up a story about her using images instead of words. What she thought, what she said, what she actually was living and how different they were.
I was scanning a sketchbook from 2020 recently and noticed a pattern in a number of drawings. There were a number of nudes with arms raised in joy, ranging from the simplest of stick figures to full nudes in a domestic setting. I thought they all looked happy so I am gathering them together and showing them to you.
Part of the reason for showing them is because I saw the pattern. But another is that happy nudes are a rarity. Most of the time when a nude is presented in art, they are meant to be seen as serious or sensual or sexual or erotic or romantic or beautiful. Not many are created to be seen as happy. But happy is just as legitimate an emotion for someone who is nude as any other emotion or feeling.
Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced
The Hemorrhage
When I was 17 I found my mother almost unconscious on the landing of our staircase at home. I recognized she was drunk. I brought her upstairs so she could go to her bedroom and lay down. She had her hand covering her forehead and as I left her at the top of the stairs she turned to me and dropped her hand. She had the most massive angry purple bump on her head I had ever seen. I knew immediately I had to get her to the hospital, which I did. She had had a massive brain hemorrhage with results very similar to a stroke. She spent 6 months away from home, first in the ICU, then a general ward of the hospital and then in a convalescent hospital. She came home with a slightly palsied right side of her body, a limp and some slurred speech.
The Addiction
I knew why this had happened. It was because she was an alcoholic. But during the entire 6 months recovery that was never mentioned or dealt with by her or my father. As a matter of fact, when she returned home she started drinking again. I was absolutely livid that my father was allowing alcohol in the house when he knew this was what almost killed her. I said so to his face a number of times. I also told it to my mom. I told her that absolutely, completely, without a single doubt in my mind, that if she kept on drinking she would kill herself. My older sister Nancy also knew and said the same. Even my younger sister, Jackie, who was only 9, knew it.
The Decision
But my mom didn’t believe she had a problem and my father didn’t want to face that she did. The consequences were too great to their way of life. But finally my father changed his mind and realized there was no alternative but that she go to an in-patient rehabilitation hospital and get sober. We all went together to drop her off. She was as angry as I had ever seen her (and I had seen her plenty angry). She thought we all hated her and she hated all of us. We all cried as we left. It was horrible and more.
The Blow Up
But I was never more relieved in my entire life. I knew she had to face it and I knew she wasn’t going to at home. And she did face it. She was there for 12 weeks. She plan was no contact for the first month and then only once a week I think. But less than 2 weeks after she went in I was blown up on our boat and almost died. I faced my own trials at that point, recovering from extensive burns. The rest of my family obviously had these serious events they also had to face.
But it was my mother who had to face the darkest of times. Not only was she just beginning her journey of sobriety, she had to deal with that while knowing her son was perhaps dying off in some hospital in Brooklyn, NY and she could do nothing about it. She wasn’t even allowed to call me for over a week. It was all just so harsh and so overwhelming for her.
Letting Go
So what happened? When she finally came home after 12 weeks (I had been home from the hospital for about 2 weeks at that point) she was a changed person. She was sober but it was much more than that. She had faced every possible demon, angel, heartache, abandonment and hatred of herself and others imaginable. And she had come out the other side at peace. How did that happen? She told the story that she was just going through the motions at the hospital, reciting the various 12 steps, the various sayings and truisms of AA, without much enthusiasm or true belief they were helpful. But when she heard I had been hurt that all changed. Then she completely gave up control and believed in all her heart the saying ‘Let go and let God.’
That is when it all made sense to her and she turned the corner. She lived 15 more sober, peaceful years and that healed and redeemed so much for our family.
Facing Your Mountain
I tell this story for two reasons. One, to illustrate the quote that you must face something to change it. There is no way around it. But the other reason is to also illustrate that you cannot orchestrate what that facing will look like. You may think you can see the mountain and all you have to do is climb it. But you don’t know what is just beyond your vision. What valley could heal you, what river could drown you, what bear could eat you alive, what human or divine being could save you. You don’t even know if you will be successful.
But you know for damn sure you will not be successful if you don’t turn your face towards the mountain and start climbing.
The desire for prestige and honor in front of ones peers.
The drive for power that comes with having money.
The illusory comfort that says nothing bad can happen to me now.
The feeling that wealth equals moral goodness and/or intellectual superiority.
Whatever is behind it, the danger of caring too much about money is you end up caring too little about value. I don’t mean value as in a bargain at the store. I am talking about what is of true value – relationships, creativity, art, love, mercy, compassion, trust, environment, justice, law, peace, knowledge, education and more.
Just remember, what you pay attention to is what you become. We can see the results all around us, for good and bad.
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.
Big Ambitions
Have you ever had big ambitions that didn’t come to pass? I have. For me it was to be a famous fine artist and to be a professor of Art at a University. I came close to reaching both but neither of those things happened. There are many reasons why. Most, but not all, had to do with me. Of course there were decisions about employment and gallery representation that were beyond my control and I don’t give those vagaries of fortune much thought. But I do think now and then about what I did control and how if I had done this or that differently maybe those things would have happened. When I do think in that way I have trained myself to quickly change focus and think instead about what I did accomplish.
Major/Minor
To use the metaphor of baseball, I didn’t make it to the major leagues but I did make it to the minor leagues. I was having local and regional exhibitions, being highlighted in local publications, getting a number of grants and awards and teaching at the community college level for 9 years. I helped found and lead a photography club for 8 years as the director of education, giving lectures and leading hands-on outings.
The result was that my art was seen and made an impact. My knowledge of drawing, photography, art and art history was given to hundreds of students. All that was wonderful and fulfilling just as it’s fulfilling for a minor league player to play for a crowd, no matter the size.
The Littlest Thing
But here is the ironic part. Who would figure that the littlest thing I ever did in art, the least consequential, the least impactful to the smallest group of people, the one where I was planting the littlest of seeds would be what got me the most fame and the greatest following.
And that is what you are looking at here. A Napkin. I started drawing on napkins in 1998 to put in my daughters’ lunches. It’s now 2025, 27 years later, and I am still doing it. I got national attention, I got local attention, I got invited to speak at conferences and to lead workshops. I sold work. I live streamed drawing napkins as hundreds of people watched from around the world.
My point in telling you this is to help you realize that no matter how seemingly unable you are to make big things happen, you are ALWAYS able to make little things happen. Doing something little isn’t defeat, it’s progress and it’s growth. Nothing big starts big. It starts as something little.
Many engaged in public affairs are often doing so by the mere act of paying attention. We aren’t at town hall meetings and we aren’t calling our representatives over every issue. But we are paying attention. And just like in so many areas of life, we think if we do something then everyone must do that same thing. I watch the evening weather forecast every night so everyone else probably does the same. But as we get older and wiser we realize that is a fallacy. It is not true that just because we do something everyone else does it.
This is especially true regarding public affairs and politics. I pay a lot of attention to it but I know many people who pay almost no attention to it. If I mention something egregious that a leader says or I mention a certain bill was passed there is a good chance they don’t know about it.
Sometimes I think that can be a blessing. It’s nice to just go about ones life and not be inundated by the constant noise of public and political activity. It can be distracting, distressing, disturbing. And more often than not, there is not a lot one can do about it. So why spend time paying attention to it?
Here’s why. Because there is evil in the world. My definition is this: Evil, like sin, is an attitude and an action that hurts, condemns, treats unfairly, cheats, murders, denigrates, and hates. But evil, unlike sin, is not only individual, it can be corporate, it can be organized and institutionalized. It can get big. Very big.
If you aren’t paying attention to the public life of your community, state, nation and world, then you might miss a lot of noise. But you will miss seeing evil being done. It might not affect you at first, but evil has a way of spreading and before you know it, the evil that was inflicted on the person who isn’t like you will be inflicted on the person who is like you and then on you. And then what will you do?
We often talk about how we can’t unsee something. Whether an assassination on TV, a bomb being dropped, or a predator attacking its prey, it sticks with us when we see something horrific. But what about how we see? That matters because whatever we actually see we see through the filter of our mhat tells us how to interpret what we are seeing. It tells us what to pay attention to, what to ignore, what to believe, what not to believe. It tells us what is good, what is evil, what is dangerous, what is safe.
There is a common theme in much of Christianity and that is seeing things through the ‘Christian world view’. It is how they see the world and how they think the world should be seen. If people saw the world that way, the correct way according to them, then the world would be a better place. It is a filter through which they interpret the world. All religions do the same as do political and social movements. We all have a point of view and I don’t see that as wrong, up to a point.
That point where I think it goes wrong is when all other world views are either ignored, ridiculed, condemned, hated, or dismissed. This usually happens not because those other world views deserve it but because the person doing the seeing is afraid or ignorant of those other world views.
What would happen if you weren’t afraid of others ways of seeing the world? What if you allowed yourself to see through those other filters? Would you become one of those people? Would you suddenly convert or abandon how you see the world? Evidence shows that is not the case. Just because you listen to someone, even someone with good arguments, does not mean you are required to overhaul your belief systems.
What most people who are open to ‘seeing’ other views actually do is understand better. I think that is a good thing.
Violence is a Confession of Ultimate Inarticulateness
It doesn’t matter if you agreed or disagreed vehemently with Charlie Kirk. You had the opportunity to debate and argue with him, or anyone else, about those issues, or about methods, character, truth, God or any other subject.
That was what he was doing when he was murdered – debating and arguing.
If you can’t or won’t educate yourself enough to do that, then the fault is yours, not his.
The same goes for ANYONE else you disagree with right, left, or center.
You don’t have the right to take your inability, that intellectual or emotional impotence, and murder someone because of it, no matter what absurd rationalization you cover it with.
Her eyes were closed during the sermon and I was worried about her coffee on the ledge so I decided she was worried about it too.
The Sermon About Money
I imagined her speaking one and thinking another.
The Sermon About Barabbas
The young women listening closely to the guest pastor preaching about Barabbas being set free instead of Jesus on the order of Pilate who washed his hands of the whole thing and went home to a good dinner.
Uh Uh Uh
Um
Um Ahh Hmm
The doctor studied the patient and diagnosed she was a snake and prescribed and apple a day
Most of my collages end up being in series, but not all. Just as with the horizontal collages I posted prior to this one, many times I am not focused on a theme, I’m focused on a person. In each of these cases I met these people serendipitously. While some of the people I knew before hand, there were no planned shoots, no advanced warning. I saw them, (in some cases just meeting them for the first time), asked them to let me photograph them at that moment and they said yes. That was it. They and the environment they were in gave me the raw material and I built the collages from there.
The Texture of the Truth
I was looking for an estate sale in a neighborhood and happened upon an open house on the same block. I went in just out of curiosity and met the realtor. When I finished looking around I found her out on the front porch. She was lit beautifully with front light and since I had my camera with me I took a chance and asked her if I could take some photographs of her right there and then. She said yes. The clarity, texture and contrast of her skin was perfect, especially her hand against her teal colored shirt.
The Circles Around Her
I was at an art opening in Downtown Tulsa when I happened upon one of my daughter’s closest high school friends from many years before. I first saw someone lit from behind by the circles of a giant interactive Light Bright and took a quick picture. It wasn’t until I came up closer that I realized it was her. She had seen plenty of my artwork in our home over the years so she knew exactly what I did. She was game for me to take some quick pics of her in the middle of this outdoor art scene.
The Natural Function
I was at a coffee house in Tulsa when I noticed a high school friend of one of my daughters from years before sitting at a nearby table working. I eventually went up to her to say hi and noticed she was doing math homework. She had the late afternoon sun hitting her at that point and the color was amazing. I asked her if I could take some photographs of her and her surroundings and she said yes.
The Mind and Heart
I met this woman at a cafe in Tulsa. She had on some gorgeous jewelry that caught my eye. I introduced myself and had a nice conversation about many things including the jewelry, which was of her own creation. I asked if I could take some photographs of her and the jewelry and she said yes. We also talked about using both your head and heart to create and when I went outside I found a very colorful pile of trash inexplicably on the side of the road and a single cloud all by itself in the sky. They seems a metaphor for the head and heart so I put them in the middle of her portrait.
The Jewelry Truth
This woman was a student at the medical college where I worked and I would see her again and again with incredible jewelry. Finally I asked her if I could take some photographs of her and her jewels for a collage. They seemed to be so much of an organic part of her that I wanted them coming directly out of her.
Pretty Angst
I met this woman at an art opening in Tulsa. I was single at the time and we made plans to get together. We did a number of art oriented things together though we never actually dated. She ended up posing for me 2-3 times for collages. She had a complicated and convoluted life situation at the time and this collage was meant to express that fragmentation.
What Surrounded Her Smile
I was in Shenendoah Valley, Virginia for a wedding and visited a medicinal herb shop. The proprietor explained some of the items for sale with such a positive, smiling attitude that I really wanted to do a collage of her and all that surrounded her. And so I did.
Boat Gabardine
She was a co-worker of mine. When I photographed her she told me her dress fabric pattern was called Gabardine. I made a collage of a photo of the fabric/skin and it reminded me of a boat.
Relative Construction
It started out as a portrait of a relative of mine and it still is but sometimes a portrait becomes abstract and it’s all about the formal elements of color, texture, contrast and composition, not a face or a body.
Portrait in a Garden
I was in Colorado for a wedding when I met this woman in the lobby of the hotel we were staying at. She asked about my camera and that led to me telling her about my photography and photo collages. Next thing I know I am in the garden next to the hotel taking photographs of her and her surroundings. In particular I loved finding leaves in the garden that echoed the texture of the skin on her chest.
The Beauty Blend
I met this mother daughter duo at a wedding. The more I looked at them the more I saw how, even though they dressed and styled themselves differently, they still retained a strong connection. I asked them if I could take some photographs for a collage and they said yes.
The Good Dream
For many years I worked at a restaurant in San Jose, California. One co-worker was a music student at the time and later became a professional singer. She posed for me in an opera gown for a large drawing I was doing at the time (early 1990s). Years later I met up with her in Boston where she was performing at the big central church of her denomination. I was able to go to the service and hear her. Afterwards I took some photos of her, the sanctuary, church and details that I later used for this collage.
