Hello Notes Readers—
Last week, I had a wonderful opportunity to present a short talk at an art salon here in NYC sponsored by creative.nyc. Because a few kind people asked for it, here is a transcript from the presentation.
Tonight, I’d like to share a couple of experiences that have happened to me over the last year and how they have started something new in my studio.
I wrote most of this in a journal on the flight home from one of those experiences. I’m going to read from that tonight. I hope there’s something useful in it for you.
After four days hiking and kayaking in the Montana wilderness with my oldest son, Oliver, I was wiped out, but in the best possible way.
He’d just graduated from college in Seattle, and we were there to reflect. To create a rite of passage. A liminal space.
We’ve done this at regular intervals throughout his lifetime. We’ve walked together as father and son for twenty-three years.
Now he begins his walk as an adult, on his own.
We spent time just being where our feet are, being in the moment. We talked about faith, love, ambition, legacy, and mortality. About the gifts God has given him.
He is at an inflection point as he emerges from this last rite of passage with me.
What will he do with his one precious life? Time will tell. I can’t wait.
I’ve asked that very same question of myself more times than I can count this last year, as we uprooted our life of over twenty years in Seattle and moved to New York City for work.
Then, just months after moving, I had a heart event, an event that would have killed me only a generation or two ago. I’m fine now, strong as ever, but abundantly aware of living on borrowed time.
So now, just like my son, I’m asking myself—even though I’ve already done dozens of things I’m proud of and grateful for in my life thus far, nevertheless, what do I do NOW with my one precious life?
It takes imagination to work that one out, and everything begins in the imagination, of course. Imagination has brought us everything from Romeo & Juliet to ICE. We have imagined our entire world into existence.
So much of the world we’ve imagined for ourselves today is dominated by anger and fear, division and distraction. We live and breathe headlines, raw data, and rage bait.
It’s a lot. Too much, actually.
And sometimes, for many of us, we can despair.
But despair is a punk and a liar.
Despair tells us there’s no hope. No truth. That it’s all meaningless. It tricks us into believing that cynicism is clever and apathy is profound. And if we give in to it, it can kill us.
So, how can we resist despair?
There are a lot of ways. But this is an art talk, so I’m going to focus on just one possible way: creating. Creating is the ultimate act of human hope.
Which brings me to the new project I’m working on, Outcry.
Outcry began in the streets with a change to my photography practice. After my heart event, I started to shift from a posture of taking photographs to one of receiving them.
Instead of aiming, shooting, and taking, I tried to spend more time receiving, listening, and exploring the margins of the city.
It’s a way of being present to the world as it is, not as I would like it to be.
From this new photo archive, I extract stills, sequences, colors, and textures that become the groundwork for this new studio work.
Photographs are translated into layered surfaces on paper, about 9 x 12”. Pigment is applied, scraped back, wiped down, sanded, rubbed out, and reapplied.
Layer after layer. Each piece develops through cycles of construction and abrasion, allowing the surface to carry both accumulation and loss. I leave stains, spills, scars, and mistakes exposed.
Materials like pastel, graphite, acrylic medium, and ink intermingle with fragments of imagery, stencil, asemic writing, line, and layers of paint: poured, splattered, squeegeed, brushed, and smeared.
The surface remains unfinished, holding evidence of fracture, fragmentation, difference, repetition, and return.
The process draws from traditions of abstraction and reduction, as well as from a longer lineage of artists who treated light, form, and space as sites of encounter rather than depiction.
My work is also shaped by a Christian posture of redemption. Not to erase damage, but to tend what is broken. The city as a body, not a battleground, with wounds to attend to.
Gratitude is involved somehow. And generosity. And kindness.
I’m interested in painting’s potential as evidence, as opposed to illustration or document. The idea extends Rothko’s famous claim that, “Painting is not about an experience, it is an experience.”
In this case, each image is made as an instance, rather than a statement. A quiet act of presence, where looking can become a form of prayer and the work remains open as a vessel for grace.
As I work, I ask questions: about color & shape, line & form. About the dangerous things of metamodernism— goodness, truth, and beauty.
In 1843 Kierkegaard wrote in his journal, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
And that tracks—most of us can think of decisions we made that changed our lives in ways we could not have possibly imagined at the time.
I can think of quite a few….
Like the summer of 1984, at a Jesus Northwest festival at the Clark County Fairgrounds in Washington State, the night I gave my life to Christ.
That night, I was just an awkward young man standing in a crowd in the Northwest rain, ready for what turned into a 41-year adventure.
Without the decision in the picture on the left, there would be no painting on the right. And I would not be standing here tonight. Guaranteed.
Let’s see if I can land this plane; tie this all together…
This is a picture of the free salsa lessons on Pier 76. Have you done this? It’s amazing The people. The languages. The music. The controlled chaos. Your shirt sticks to your skin while you stumble your way through learning all these new steps.
The idea I’d like to offer tonight is that life is a lot like learning salsa:
It can seem confusing, even terrifying at times,
You might fall down, look foolish, and get your toes stepped on,
You can’t really do it alone—partners and teachers make all the difference,
Your faith and passion are the keys that unlock the secrets of the dance,
In this one, precious life, you can watch, or you can dance. It’s up to you.
But don’t get up in your head about it.
And don’t let fear & doubt—or that punk despair—keep you from joining us on the dance floor.
Thanks so much.
I’m so grateful to Josh Dunn and the whole team at creative.nyc for the opportunity to share my work. Y’all are amazing!
Until next week,
D.
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Also important to note that I was one of 10 artists sharing their work that night. And the next salon is on Feb. 9! Dont miss it!
As you can see from Note: 008, this Substack seems to be turning into a journal project of its own. Apologies for the repetitions. These are simply the things I'm working my way through. And if they are helpful to you to ride along with them, I'm grateful.