Dear Artist,

I am borrowing from my wife on this one, a woman who has many more ism’s than she is aware… this one, her finest.

We released Kathie’s table-top hardback in 2022 and are soon to be sold out. She never dreamed of creating a book much less wanting to publish it if it was any good. Why? Because the use of paint and canvas is her thing. Together they convey what is most alive within her, not words. At least until one day when she said, Let the Art Speak.

There is a quote belonging to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Growing up I remember seeing it scribbled onto a little piece of paper and taped to my Mom’s bathroom mirror. What you do thunders so loud, I can’t hear what you say.

Maybe it was a not-so-subtle attempt at telling her teenager-son something he needed to hear. Or maybe it was her own little personal reminder she needed for making the day matter.

Last week I wrote several friends who own galleries which are scattered across the country, asking one single question: Other than the quality/beauty of the art, what is your #1 consideration when choosing which artists to represent?

Across the board their response was… The character of the artist.

One gallerist put it this way:

“I want to represent artists who are professional and have the quality of authenticity and goodness that is put into their work. I believe you can “feel” their intentions and see their energy in the paintings they create.”

When it comes to painting subject matter you love, or pricing your work rightly, or choosing consistency versus making a big splash, or placing generosity over ambition, or taking extra time to help another artist along the way, or receiving critique with openness… if you are genuine in your desire for virtues such as these, your character is transformed. Automatically it will then (here’s another Kathie-ism) travel out of your heart and soul, down your arm, through your brush and onto your canvas.

And speak for you.

To the King, Buddy

Dear Artist,

I write you this morning from the road where Kathie is completing a workshop. It is early morning here in Alabama, but my mind’s eye is somewhere else. It is taking a walk through our little home back in Walland, Tennessee, studying each painting we have hanging in our own personal gallery.

Next to my nightstand hangs an oil by Randall Graham, a straight-on and a bit ghostly look at Josh Gibson, the best baseball player who has ever lived. He died at age 35 with more home runs than Babe Ruth, but few have heard of him because he played in the Negro Leagues. Unknown because of the color of his skin.

Kathie and I choose art for our home that is grounding, not decorative. She has been rightly accused of, and even adopted the title of, being nostalgic. Which in the literal sense means, a longing for home. I am with her in that camp. David Hunter’s etching is a tiny 1”x6”, but hangs large in our lives.

If you’ve traveled out west much, then you’ve driven upon this scene, one of those marvels of nature we sometimes are privileged to witness. To understand this perspective, this outside-the-lines vision, I contend that you must be stuck in at least one of these storms before you can render the visual story to be true. The wet has to sting. The thunder has to rattle. The hail needs to be hell.

Which is why we bought this particular painting from Mary Jabens, a woman who knows what it’s like to be stuck in bad weather. This piece is our firm and solid reminder that all storms do an even greater work than what we experience while in the midst of them. They literally cut, carve and shape us. They sooth, shade and feed us. They prep our soil for the richness yet to come.

This 7”x5” linoleum cut came to us as a gift from an artist who grew up near us... just down the hall. Our son, Will Odom.

As my eye travels across “Ripple”, I find myself quietly being invited into stillness. And into searching for a reply.

Then there is the 14”x11” oil with gold-leaf painted by Olga Krimon. We own it because none of our four granddaughters live next door.

Not every painting is for selling. Some are for healing.

To the King, Buddy

Dear Artist,

According to Mirriam- Webster Dictionary:

Knowledge – information, understanding, or skill that you get from experience or education.

Belief – a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing.

Every mark you make, whether with words in a conversation or with a brush onto a canvas, is a vote for what you believe. However small each comment you make or stroke you create seems to be, each is the result of a home being constructed within you.

This home is not built by knowledge, even though the accumulation of such is important. It a place which is constantly and forever being shaped, like the process of cement being mixed. Like dropping your vote into a ballot box… for the end result of developing your ability to believe.

Why do I say all this? Because the key to life is to be found in my beliefs. And every action I take, especially the act of creating, keeps me in the game.

Last week I was painting in a Quickdraw near Charleston, South Carolina. It’s an event in which each painter works outdoors to create a finished piece of art from scratch within a two-hour period. Because of the limitation of time each decision made of color-choice and mark-making is crucial to the presentation of the end product.

Daniel, My Brother, 10x16, Oil on Linen, 10x16

I framed my wet oil painting and turned it in for judging. While waiting, three different people asked me if I had fun. My reply was: It was problem solving, which is sometimes fun and sometimes not… but it was life-giving!

Every mark I made was a vote for what I believe.

To the King, BuddyO

Dear Artist,

Following is a letter I wish someone had sent to me.

Dear Buddy,

You are almost halfway through writing 52 letters to your friends about art. I thought I’d list the past 24 “Buddy-ism” headings and invite you to think hard on them, to slow down and step back for a bit to consider your own words again.

• Create Like It Matters - Because It Does, Even if No One Claps.

• The Real Masterpiece is What Painting Makes of You.

• The World Doesn’t Need More Bodacious Artists, It Needs Truer Ones.

• Don’t Chase Beauty, Bear Witness to It.

• Art Which Costs Nothing Probably Says Nothing.

• You Will Find Yourself the Moment You Stop Imitating and Start Listening.

• Some Paintings Are Just Prayers with Pigment.

• Hope Cannot Be Fed By Giving Up.

• Work Small, Think Holy.

• Critique Can Sharpen but You Can Only Be Set Apart through Surrender.

• The Blessing Isn’t in the Brush, It’s in the Showing Up.

• Stop Asking, “Is This Good?”, Ask, “Is This Me Being Honest?”

• Activate the Eye.

• If It’s Terrifying, You’re Probably onto Soemthing.

• Silence is Part of the Composition.

• Don’t Confuse Momentum with Meaning.

• Live in the ING not the ED.

• Everything I Needed Was Just a Delay Tactic.

• Fight Going MIA.

• Dentistry and Art are the Same Thing.

• The Artist’s Best Friend is the Trashcan.

• To Create and to Play, Both Are Devine.

Buddy, I am writing you the letter you wish someone had sent you in real sincerity because I know you want to communicate with real sincerity yourself. My hope for you is to consider if these Buddy-ism’s are increasingly pointing you true north. If so, then good. If not, then just know that you are growing.

To the King, Buddy

1) There is a foundation I keep returning to over my almost 70 years of life… a Source, a Base, a Bedrock to my life. No, it is not Kathie. And no, it is not an it. It is a Person, The Person, if you will. The Trinitarian God, the Maker and Almighty who is Three-in-One… Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To Him and by Him I continue to return.

2) I am not very good at it… the act of returning, that is.

My favorite book is the novel, Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. In it Jayber says of himself,

Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises.

My life has been carried by Another. Yet I am not very good at returning to that fact.

It says in the first pages of the Bible that God, this same Another who is carrying me, did two things. For six of the first seven days He created. He made all there is, the cosmos and the camel, the stars and the stingray, the huckleberry and the human race, who are fashioned after His very Self.

On day seven, He stopped creating. He ceased. He took 14.3% of the very first week and stopped. Why, I am not sure. But He did it. He took what is called, Sabbath, which literally means to re-create. Recreate. Play.

To create and to play, both are Divine.

In the studio right now there is a blank canvas calling my name, inviting me. I even know what my first mark on it is going to be. The end product may or may not be appealing, but I will produce something that has never been.

There is also something else calling my name… 14.3% of each week asks me to stop making. To cease. Not a day-off to run errands or catch up on things around the house, but a day to both turn to the Another in gratitude and to simply play. Which will re-create a space in me enabling me to do a better work come Monday.

The rabbi and author Abraham Joshua Heschel, tells the story in his book, The Sabbath, of a holy man who sees a broken fence in his vineyard on the Sabbath and vows to fix it later. But then he decides to never repair it at all because the mere thought of mundane work crossed his mind on a day set aside to pray and play.

Now that’s Divine.

To the King, BuddyO

Dear Artist,

American record producer, Rick Rubin, recently said:

The creative process is pure, delicate and must be protected. It gets totally undermined if you (the artist) are thinking about what happens next. 

That’s why the artist’s best friend is the trashcan…

which takes the shape of a pencil eraser for the poet,
or a sore throat for the singer,
or backspace button for the writer,
or burn pile for the painter.

When starting over or trying again, the creator not only gets a clean slate, he also gets to taste of little mortality which goes a long way. More importantly he composts himself.

You see, this process of creating re-uses everything once it has been deleted. The songwriter who scribbles out a beautiful phrase, ponders, edits, holds and then scraps the whole attempt, is not making a mistake. He is feeding himself. He is returning a purposefully lost piece of himself to himself.

The trashcan is the artist’s composter. If you trash what you use, it gets used again below the surface. But if you hold it close to yourself to be used for something later, your artistic process gets, as Rubin says, undermined. Compromised. Weakened.

Ask any landscaper which of the four seasons is most important for plants. He would say, winter. That is why he is busy each autumn setting out shrubs and saplings… so all the plants can have a long cold spell to do the beneath work of establishing a network of roots before the arrival of spring.

What do you need to delete?

To the King, BuddyO

Dear Artist,

I appreciate your artistic desires too much to tease you along to the end of this article wondering, how does Buddy think that filling a cavity and painting a canvas is the same thing?

Here is how: Dentistry and Art are the same thing because they are both optional and necessary at the same time.

What other professions do potential clients scoff at how much they are charged? How much is that? Just to clean my teeth? I can buy cleaning strips at Target for pennies compared to that! How much is that? Just for something to hang on my wall? My grandkids can do that!

While they offer a trade which seems so very needed, I’m not sure why the dentist and the artist are uniquely singled out by the general public as trying to earn more than they should. I cannot answer for the doctors who live with bad breath blowing on them and carpel tunnel forecasted for their future, but I can for the artist.

For a one-of-a-kind piece of beauty which you can display not in your house, but in your home, where you invite loved ones to join you in resting, relaxing and refreshing, Kathie Odom pays the following expenses:

• Galleries commonly retain 50% per sale. (That’s right, when Kathie sells an original oil painting for $1500, she keeps $750).

• From that amount there are additional flat costs such as frame and hardware, canvas and the professional oil paints actually applied to the painting.

• Plus running costs such as brushes used, transportation to and from galleries, marketing, easels and other equipment, workshops attended, depreciation of assets (like paintings that never sell but took the same amount of time to produce), property taxes and website maintenance.

• Then there is Kathie’s time. Time to practice and advance her craft, time behind the easel, time to choose subject matter, time traveling to and from locations and time to rest so she can be at her best.

Every profession can itemize like this… it’s called “the cost of doing business”. But I would like to suggest that caring for my teeth and caring for my sensibilities are not at all an option and should, instead, be elevated. They are necessary.

Which is why there is no bigger fan than me of those who seek to stretch my aesthetic awareness. And why I have a standing appointment every six months with Dr. Williams at Cornerstone Dental ARTS.

To the King, BuddyO

Dear Artist,

As many of you know, and all of us will learn, aging tempts us to pump the brakes. Sometimes to slow down for the purpose of smelling the roses, but more often than not, as a result of fear. Time passes, is limited and we want for more.

I remember the days when I imagined the possibility of doubling my age (when 30, I dreamed what life would look like when I turned 60), but no longer is that conceivable. In a couple weeks I will turn 69.

My dad, a Navy man, passed away at the age of 39. Now more than ever, I think of the young fella with a high-and-tight pompadour. In my mind’s eye I see him standing on the bow of the USS Burleson in the morning dark poised to get home to sweep my then 16-year-old Mom off her feet.

The C word took him when I was ten. Over the years and with a vivid imagination God must’ve given me, I constructed a vision of who he was and what he would be like today… unfair for sure, but something a lost teenager needed at the time. Doing so has helped me fight going MIA.

Today, as I am a single decade away from doubling his life, his short existence has kept me in the game. Not to make him proud so much as to just be present where I am.

The loved ones we call the dead
depart from us and for a while
are absent. And then as if
called back by our love, they come
near us again. They enter our dreams.
We feel they have been near us
when we have not thought of them.
They are simply here, simply waiting
while we are distracted among
our obligations. At last
it comes to us: They live now
in the permanent world.
We are the absent ones.
          - Wendell Berry

May I grow more alert as the days move swiftly forward until the Day comes when I have never been more awake than ever.

To the King, BuddyO

Over this Labor Day weekend, I sat under the clippers of my grandson, an artist and entrepreneur, a uniquely and wonderfully-made young man willing to seize the day with his imaginative endeavors. This morning my neck feels so good.

It takes moxie, nerve and down-right courage to lay your art on the line and let it walk around town for others to see. Although he has a gene or two of mine, I am more likely to act otherwise. If you listen closely you might hear the following words coming out of my mouth … First I need to get my house in order, my ducks in a row or my act together.

Or even more directly stated… I don’t have the tools. I don’t have the talent. I don’t have the time.

Words I write now to myself, which I am learnING from my grandson: Everything I thought I needed was just a delay tactic. Tactic - a specific action used to achieve a particular goal. Delay - to make something happen later than planned.

It’s not a goal I need to set, which I will probably postpone until later. It’s not accountability I need to secure. (My old mentor once described accountability as a chain holding a dog back. It’s not a training tool, it’s a restraining tool). And I don’t need to do something with all my ducks.

I need to put a brush in my hand. Today.

To the King, BuddyO

Dear Artist,

I misnamed a painting recently, the one attached to this letter. I really love the painting… how the memory of sitting there still lingers within me, the lavender smell and the overwhelming sense of solitude. I was so very present that I only had enough time to get the drawing in and ended up finishing it in the studio. But, as I mentioned before, I should have named it something else.

“All by Myself”, 10x16, Oil on Linen.

Every scene from every TV show or movie, EVERY scene you and I have ever witnessed, had a restricted view. Purposefully. We are unable to see outside the boundaries given to us… the camera man, the booms, microphones and lights, the one who shouts quiet on the set!, the makeup artist, people with great significance in the moment (the writer, producer and director), the actors waiting for their cue, and those who do hushed and unassuming work, the ones who barely receive recognition in the final credit roll… all poised with purpose to shape what we are seeing, our vision, into an unforgettable story.

I’ve spoken into a camera lens many times before which brings a perspective no one else has. I see the clutter outside the frame you are looking through. It’s there, you just don’t see it.

The #1 pleasure of our travels over the past decade is to sit long enough in one single spot to let it impact us. That’s what plein air painting does. It pushes everything to the side, out of the frame, restricting us into the now. It confines our moments, not to a village so we can say we’ve been-there-done-that, but to a specific four square feet of earth where our butts sit for a few hours. We don’t visit Inistige, Ireland to learn of its beautiful history and the people who forged it into existence. Instead we visit a place to BE a tiny sliver of its history.

We are living in the ING not the ED. LookING not lookED. LearnING not learnED. LiveING not livED.

I am exhibit A for a person who is guilty of moving on to the next thing quickly because my to-do list is long. I don’t easily shop, I go in and out as quickly as possible to retrieve what I need. I don’t easily chat, I schedule chatting. I don’t linger. I don’t piddle. I don’t easily live in the ING.

But painting helps me push things out of the way for a bit, helps give my brain a rest from the need to check things off and helps me think that I am, as the painting is named, all by myself.

Truth be told, I was not alone. Kathie was over my right shoulder looking the other way and painting. To the far right of the road a woman was clipping a hedge. To my left was a trash can and a small heard of dairy cattle. A river flowed behind the tree line. And way behind me in the tiny town square was a food truck, parking lot and 150+ other artists with unhinged easels… looking to live in the ING.

Maybe the painting should have been entitled, More than Meets the Eye.

To the King, BuddyO

Dear Artist,

Some of this Buddy-ism will be old hat to you. In many ways you already know that the # of followers you have or the # of paintings you sell or the # of moments you experience when it feels as though, yes, my life is working… you already know that purpose is not found purely in work ethic.

When I overhear someone with a big smile on their face say to Kathie as she slaps paint on her canvas outdoors, Wow! You are just living the life girl!, I ask them if they know the Latin and Greek definition of the word, work? (They always respond with a no, please tell me). And I say that work means work in every language. That what you are witnessing, my friend, is a woman who is leaning into a good work she has been given. That it’s not all roses and a glass of chilled Chardonnay coming out the end of her brush.

What I am saying is this: Creating is hard work which is personal, mentally taxing, physically demanding, constantly a tug to the emotions, a test of fortitude and an affront to many who don’t call it worthy. It is indeed a good work, but it’s still work.

To get a ball rolling takes thought, planning, throwing ideas onto the wall to see what might stick, finding your tribe, the willingness to grapple, vacation time when you can’t vacate, consistency, vision, support, sticktoitiveness, rest in the midst of it all, being current as possible with marketing trends, feeling like you’re not as crazy as you feel and oh, I forgot to say, money.

BUT don’t confuse momentum with meaning.

Kathie has been in a real groove lately, finding a yet-to-be-realized rhythm in her art career. Her latest paintings are stunning and the momentum is so very gratifying to her.

Saturday she and I drove to a commitment she made to paint live at a fundraiser for a non-profit in our Great Smoky Mountains Nat’l Park. After doing this sort of thing several times over the years, we were well aware how difficult this could be, with it possibly being a bit of a dog and pony show.

Is this something she wanted to do… stop the momentum and paint outside of her flow? Give half of her weekend away and then DONATE the painting? And even consider that the subject matter might not be of her choosing?

The simple answer is, yes. That’s because Kathie doesn’t confuse meaning with momentum as much as I do. She’s not hell bent on JUST painting what she wants to paint (see Buddy-ism #12) or spend her time like she wants to spend her time.

Of course the evening went beautifully as did her painting. Lots of people, drinks, mingling and laughter followed by sitting together at a fine dinner and auction. Next to her, the former mayor of Knoxville and next to me, the new Park Superintendent. All with a glob of magenta oil paint in her hair, something she could not get out!

All because the day had meaning to Kathie Odom.

To the King, BuddyO

Dear Artist,

I have a good friend who says, I am not sure there is such a thing as willpower… mind over matter, that is.

A statement like that does not provoke me to the point of judging if it is right or wrong. Instead I am stimulated to wonder, what could it look like to walk around in life not strong arming myself to do better or be better? If there is an alternative, what is it?

My iPhone has changed me so much over the past couple of decades. One would think it would save me time, make me more productive and thus create more space in my life. Yet it has condensed my time, which I usually fill with even more busyness, leaving me anxious. Yes, I can get a lot more done than I could 20 years ago, but now I journal less and rarely walk down the road with my hands in my pockets just for the pure sake of walking down the road with my hands in my pockets.

Quiet Please, 8x13, Oil on Linen

I’ve tried several things with only minimal success. Willpower hasn’t helped. So now I am actively sorting out how to do more life with less of the screen in my back pocket which seemingly offers all answers to all questions.

But what if, as the poet Rilke says in his Letters to a Young Poet, questions are not meant to always have resolution…

In the great silence of these distances, I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life, even more than I was in Paris, where everything echoes and fades away differently because of the excessive noise that makes Things tremble. Here, where I am surrounded by an enormous landscape, which the winds move across as they come from the seas, here I feel that there is no one anywhere who can answer for you those questions and feelings which, in their depths, have a life of their own; for even the most articulate people are unable to help, since what words point to is so very delicate, is almost unsayable.

A canvas painted in disorder is not the same thing as an abstract piece of art. Within beautiful abstracts there is little noise. Silence is part of the composition, whether in the face of someone sitting at peace. Or a landscape which longs for nothing. Or me taking a walk down the road with my hands in my pockets.

Kathie says every painting need quiet space.

Me too.

To the King, BuddyO

Dear Artist,

I long to write with honesty, but it’s not working. Instead I keep myself hemmed in, making (maybe wrongly) a judgement that you really don’t want to see everything.

I hold back all which swims within me. If I were to tell you ALL of it you may a) discover that you are not alone in the crazy world called the interior life, a place where both the darkest darks and brightest brights coexist, b) intersect with a piece of beauty you did not know existed within another or c) wish the exposure would have stayed covered up and remained behind closed doors. It is said that some things are just not acceptable.

Maybe that’s why I paint. Maybe I can introduce to you a bit of this unbridled me with subtlety. Like a poet instead of a preacher. Enter through the backdoor if you will.

Somehow though, aloft in the room is a miniature, gray-underbellied thundercloud hovering just above my head… Am I, without knowing it, being just as dishonest by first weighing my options before jumping into a blank canvas?Am I holding back from slathering a certain brushstroke because I deem you don’t want to see it?

Living-in-the-question is the interior life’s delivery room where babies are born. Wonder sleeps with confusion, withholding mates with desire, wisdom and foolishness become the best of odd couples and timidity winks at fearlessness.

Whether it’s a life decision in front of you, a letter you need to write or an act of artistry staring you in the face, if it’s terrifying, you’re onto something.

My latest terrifying Work in Progress (WIP)… see Buddy-ism #15 for reference image.

To the King, BuddyO

Thank you for supporting my writing, and if possible, please consider a paid subscription… that way other artists who cannot yet afford to pay may benefit also.

Dear Artist,

A mentor of mine once told me… Buddy, feelings are important, but they don’t matter.

He wasn’t discounting how I processed what life has dealt me, what I lacked as a kid, how I was treated inn high school, the things I missed out on in early adulthood, being overlooked or countless bad choices. He said, how you feel about those things are like a gust of wind which pushes you around but, at the end of the day, have no weightiness, no gravitas.

Plainly speaking, the main obstacle to Activating the eye, is the question, Do I feel like it? (Shouldn’t I just follow my heart and do as I wish?)

There are many, many decisions to be weighed and sorted through in life. Feelings are important when it comes to living, but they don’t matter. As I suggested last week, being anchored by a chosen-ness, seeing my life as an appointment and realizing I was made for this life which I have been given will anchor me. Not, do I feel like following through with hard things?

Don’t we need encouragement?

My answer: It is so good to be fed my another’s words, especially when it helps me move forward in, let’s say, my painting. But do I “need” it? No, not when I am activating the eye of my soul by stepping into commitments or following through with decisions I made long ago but no longer feel like completing.

Since I paint much more slowly than Kathie, I will come home from the UK with a stack of unfinished paintings. I may not finish them all but I will try to. I will reactivate the moments my eye looked hard on the field of lavender in Inistige, the Franciscan Friary of Wexford, Ireland, and the crashing ocean waves on the other side of the Atlantic. Because it is what I have been given.

And I will do other hard things when I get home. My brother and sister are showing me how to, because it is what we’ve been given.

To the King, BuddyO

Thank you for supporting my writing, and if possible, please consider a paid subscription… that way other artists who cannot yet afford to pay may benefit also.

Dear Artist,

Last week I kept #13 short and sweet but now I have more unpacking to do.

Activate the Eye is the ism I offered last week. Which is more than just looking hard and long… and more than just a practical application for an artist like me and you. It is taking what we have been given and owning it. Let me say it this way.

Last week Kathie and I were painting in a quiet country village in England (picture Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit) when an Arab family from Dubai walked up to watch, two boys and their parents. Quickly the 10-year-old, Sahil, and I engaged and the conversation went something like this:

Are you an artist too? I asked. Sahil: I want to be. That means you long to bring beauty into a troubled world, did you know that? No but that is fun to think about. Do you know what the most important thing to developing into an artist is? (He stunned me with his answer) Love and Passion.

I was thinking the word, Practice.

That small but significant conversation got me thinking. As we develop into artists, whether the artistry of motherhood, painting watercolors, baking from scratch, having a good conversation, praying for another, selling real estate or repairing cars, there might be a way to activate the eye of the soul which is deeper than looking deeper, taking more of an ownership in our craft than just saying something like, this is what I do.

Try it on this way. Instead of seeing your artistry, what you do day in and day out, as something you love, are passionate about and put to practice, activate the eye of your soul by owning it in three ways. (The first one starts big and invites us into increase as we move to #2 and then #3)

Activate the eye of the soul by first seeking to own this statement. I AM CHOSEN. At this moment, on this day and in this season, my work, my craft, my artistry, my tasks which are in front of me have been given to me. I am chosen.

Think back to last weeks exercise of looking at the lamb for 60 seconds, activating your physical eye on the image to see how engaged you can be with your vision. Being CHOSEN is the same thing. Owning, embracing, not running or ignoring what is before you… and then opening wide your mouth for it to be filled.

I have often read that this notion of chosen-ness is the end goal. But I suggest there are two more that could follow with even more power underneath them.

Activate the eye of the soul by attempting to lay claim to this second statement. I HAVE BEEN APPOINTED. This ramps it up, doesn’t it? Imagine yourself sitting in front of an easel or having a hard conversation. What is staring back at you is an appointment for you to have.

Helen Keller could neither see nor hear… she had no eyes or ears to activate. Even still, she was the first deafblind person to earn a college degree, wrote 14 books and was a founding member of the ACLU. While others would learn ways of compensation for legitimate disabilities, she owned it as her appointment in life.

(After writing this paragraph I stop to think, if Helen Keller moves from the recognition of being chosen to being appointed, how hard can it be for me to do the day in front of me?)

And yes, I have a third level (if you will) of Activating the eye of my very own soul… I WAS MADE FOR THIS.

For me this is the moment after a long and arduous mountain trek, stepping around that last turn to finally lay eyes on the summit. FULLY knowing that I was made for that destination. Climbing the ridge of chosen and scaling the cliff of appointed before having a vision of knowing well that I was made to be THERE!

Note: there is no arrival in any of the three ways of seeing my life… because it’s about the journey. Why? Because we will make countless mistakes along the waya, say foolish things to our kids, rub out numerous canvases, have an outburst that doesn’t seem like us, have screwed up emotions, forget, stumble, trip, fall and fail with the ones we love.

It’s about the act of activating, not producing the painting. Or even good children.

I am Chosen, I have been Appointed, I was Made for This.

To the King, BuddyO

Thank you for supporting my writing, and if possible, please consider a paid subscription… that way other artists who cannot yet afford to pay may benefit also.

Dear Artist,

This may be the most self-explanatory and easy-to-exercise Buddy-ism there is.

Try it with me would you? Look up from the screen at your surroundings (or enjoy looking at this sweet lamb) for a full 60 seconds and tell yourself to Activate the Eye. Then come back here.

Wasn’t that right, easy and right again? You looked, didn’t you? I mean really looked. AND I bet it was fun to turn those two eyeballs on!

Sorry if you feel short-changed on this article being so short, but the ism is so spot on, I’d ruin it by writing on and on. By implementing this practice, dear artist, you can take this one to the bank.

To the King,

Buddy

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Dear Artist,

I am with Kathie as she begins a workshop today in Yorkshire, England. An hour ago we each went around the table and introduced ourselves by telling what got us to this place.

As I told them a bit of my most recent story, which included a difficult week when my siblings and I had to make some troubling relational choices, I mentioned that the easel pulled me like a magnet during the wee hours of the night. I told Kathie’s art students that I could not explain how I produced three paintings over those seven days which are far and away the most favorites I have ever done.

As I walked away a lovely painter from Seattle approached me to say, I know why you were so free to paint during your hard times. Please tell me, I replied. You instinctively knew that your act of creating would release the area of your brain which was stuck in obsessing over your trauma… to give it a rest.

After thanking her, I thought of my Buddy-ism. Stop asking “Is this good? Ask, “Is this me being honest?”

When it comes to hardship, my nature says to fight or flight, which manifests itself by me trying to get it right. But when I am more honest with me about me, I can rest a bit. Create more freely. Listen more intently. Taste joy more quickly.

At the easel I find a lot more fun in being honest. In other words… painting what I want to paint, being okay with being misunderstood, ignoring a lot of rules, disregarding what someone might think and not keeping score on my progress. Being childlike.

Enough with today’s ism. Now off to paint truthfully.

To the King, BuddyO

For the Love of Work, 14x24, Oil on Linen

One that seemed like me being honest.

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Dear Artist,

Like you I have been a part of so many lives and want to bear witness to what I have all stored up within myself, stories and memories I want to relive by telling them again!

Like standing with my grandfather on his back porch on a pitch dark January morning, slipping on snow boots and seeing our breath by flashlight. Putting on the layers and crunching new footsteps to the barn because the cow needs to be milked or she would burst.

So tell me, how in the world do I take a brush and paint that story??

The blessing isn’t in the brush, it’s in the showing up. It’s not the act of reproducing, it’s in the memory of it all. It’s not in the sadness that the story is over, it’s the fact that I got to experience a ridiculously cold morning with a ridiculously wonderful man who loved his eight-year-old grand-milker to pieces.

By the way, the desire to express is larger and richer than the desire to experience. Giving freely has an infinite payback while experiencing an awesome moment has both a short shelf life (can’t repeat a new thing over and over) and creates in us a demanding spirit (THAT is how I should live and, damn it, THAT is how I’m going to live!). But after being loved wholeheartedly by another (an experience), I am even more enlivened when I reciprocate (express), pass it along or as we say around the Odom house, get out of our campsite.

Years ago we went on an annual camping trip with several empty-nested friends… adults only because all the kids were off to college and beyond. We invited another couple who had purchased a new camper and wanted to try this overnight-in-the-mountains thing they kept hearing us talk about. After a full day and night of wondering why no one came by to sit with them around their campfire (an experience), we told them to get out of their campsite and go to others (express). It was a game-changing moment.

Now back to the question of: So tell me, how in the world do I take a brush and paint that story?? Answer: Show up.

In other words the answer lies in the better question of, how do I show up? Answer: Even though I get overwhelmed by it all, like trying to construct a word from the letters in a spoon full of Campbell’s alphabet soup, I simply exercise Anne Lamott’s first rule of writing… Butt in chair.

And remembering that it is in the chair where I am blessed. Not in what I produce by sitting in it.

You and I were made to express. Show up.

To the King, Buddy

My grandmother on her back porch readying herself for a cold venture to the barn. Thanks for showing up in my life MeMama.

Thank you for supporting my writing, and if possible, will you consider a paid subscription… that way other artists who cannot yet afford to pay may benefit also.

Dear Artist,

Recently a friend asked if I would write a short piece on group art critiques, which led us into a conversation instead of me sitting here at the keypad. We talked about the difficulties of hearing opinions from all vs. the wisdom of a few, how to offer critique to friends, what a good friendship looks like, how to receive critiques, how to consider what is subjective and what is objective. Important stuff we talked about. Very.

But I gotta say _ and this comes from some serious learning curves from having Kathie Odom as both wife and teacher _ Critique can indeed sharpen but I can only be set apart as both a person and an artist through surrender.

Surrender - the act of giving up control; yielding and letting go of the demand to be right; walking around with a clinched fist.

When I picked up a brush to paint almost two years ago, I knew the strength of the painter I lived with. I did it anyway knowing that I had a chance of a lifetime to actively glean from an incredible artist who is also very kind. Until something happened early in my painting career.

She loves to tell this story: “I walked into the studio one day and saw that the values on Buddy’s painting were WAY off, and I corrected him thinking, he should know better! Later that evening I apologized by saying, ‘I’m sorry honey, I forgot that you’ve only been painting for two months!’”

We both learned something that day… she and I do not need critique more than we need to yield to one another.

Practically this is what I mean - Receive all critique in a yielding sort of way. No judgement, defense, cynicism, explanation or saying, yes, I was planing on doing that or yes, I was going to do that.

As small as this all may sound, what I am telling you now has been profound in the way in which I have begun to receive critique. From anyone. Now when someone offers their opinion, whether I ask for it or not, whether they are a master or a novice, I respond simply with two words. Thank you. It is a tiny movement toward me letting go, toward considering their words, toward surrender.

Then I edit or don’t edit my painting. It’s up to me.

To the King, BuddyO

Thank you for supporting my writing, and if possible, with a paid subscription if you can… that way other artists who cannot yet afford to pay may benefit also.

Dear Artist,

Jeez, I really really need to write about this one. Not because at the age of 68 I am thinking about being uber impactful, painting something profound or writing an article which will go viral… no, that’s not going to happen, nor do I want it to. But working small and thinking holy is what I want most.

Come with me here on a few of last week’s moments:

• Kathie and I drove to see our granddaughter in a summer theatre production for middle schoolers. What did I have to do but watch the smallness of it all? Think holy by grabbing her a small bouquet of flowers on the way.

• My 14 year old grandson chose to sit next to me as he watched his sister in the play. What did I have to do but sit in the smallness of it all? Think holy by relishing the moment with my arm resting on his seat back.

• I have a work in progress, an oil painting of a young deer looking straight at me, a mule deer I spooked up one early morning while camping in Colorado. What did I have to do but paint the smallness of it all? Think holy by remembering the glory of the chance encounter?

• We kept two other grandgirls for a few days, 5th-grade and 1st-grade sisters who counted cows on the return trip to their parents. What did I have to do but drive during the smallness of it all? Think holy by shutting up enough to enjoy their young ways.

I move my Mother into assisted living today, against her will. It doesn’t feel small at all, which is why I say, jeez, I really need to write about this one. And frankly it doesn’t feel holy either.

But it is work. Work (this is what I am hearing as I write you now) which is to be taken on one sip at a time, one step at a time, one day at a time. You can do hard things, a parent says to his child. You can work small and think holy.

To the King, BuddyO