Why We Endure: Painting the Many Forms of Love

When I was painting the fog paintings they felt like questions about endurance, about how the cycle of life persists. When I was younger the answers to those questions felt incredibly important, but as I have gotten older I have found that I enjoy the questions more than the answers.

Questions lead to more questions.

Answers often feel like the end of things.

I have learned that I would rather focus on beginnings.

The fog paintings themselves did not feel like successes to me. I do not dislike them, but I cannot say that I love them either. I think I would have liked to explore them longer, but other questions started rising to the surface that felt more urgent.

And lately I have noticed something interesting.

My ideas seem to move in cycles.

One thought leads to another. Paintings start answering one question only to uncover a deeper one beneath it. The work folds into itself in the same way life does.

So it felt natural that after asking how we endure, the next question would appear.

Why do we endure?

Love.

Right?

What else could it be?

I cannot imagine anyone enduring life’s hardships for fame or fortune. Maybe some people do, but that way of thinking has never made much sense to me.

For me, love drives almost everything.

Love for making things.
Love for exploring ideas.
Love for you and wanting you to have the space and freedom to ask your own big questions someday.

Returning to the Love Knots

When I was in college and first falling in love, I filled an entire notebook with drawings of abstract figures knotted together.

I was trying to capture all the emotions I was experiencing at the time.

The drawings just kept coming. Inspiration sometimes feels like riding a wave where the art almost creates itself and you are simply there to let it out.

I lost that sketchbook the day after I finished it.

It hurt.

But it also taught me something important. If I could create those drawings once, I could create them again.

I just did not realize it would take nearly thirty years to return to them.

But those figures came back to me when I started asking questions about endurance and why life keeps moving forward even when things get hard.

Through winter.
Through tragedy.
Through uncertainty.

Something always keeps pulling us forward.

And for me that answer kept circling back to love.

Painting the Different Forms of Love

The first painting in this new series was a whirlwind.

I tried to capture the energy of new love. That feeling of blending into another person or maybe even losing yourself inside that connection.

But something unexpected happened.

I got sick.

Your mom had to take care of me for a few days, and lying there changed the question I was asking.

Love, yes.

But what kind of love?

The world seems obsessed with romantic love. The kind celebrated in movies and songs.

But being cared for while you are sick reminds you that love takes many forms.

What I was experiencing in that moment was care.

So I painted it.

Two figures supporting each other and melting together at the same time, like they were holding liquid.

Because love changes.

Sometimes it feels powerful and empowering, like it gives you the strength to face the world.

Other times it makes you feel completely vulnerable.

Thinking about care led me to think about home.

Home is where many of us first experience love as safety and comfort. I painted “Home” with figures weaving in and out of each other, introducing openings in their bodies to represent vulnerability.

Because love often requires us to be open.

From there another question appeared.

What happens when love feels like obligation?

That painting shows one figure standing tall while another seems to be collapsing.

Your mom does not like that one.

I cannot say I love it either.

But it feels real.

Sometimes love is not romantic or beautiful. Sometimes it is simply staying when things get difficult. Sometimes it means holding someone up when they cannot stand on their own.

And that led to another question.

What happens when love becomes unhealthy?

Jealousy.

In that painting one figure tries to pull away while the other clings tightly, glowing red with emotion.

Jealousy is not logical.

It is emotional.

And if I am honest, I have been both figures at different times in my life.

But that is part of the journey.

The version of me who lost that sketchbook thirty years ago had no idea how much life was still ahead of him. Thirty years of love and loss, joy and fear, mistakes and forgiveness.

All of those experiences shape the way we understand love.

And maybe that is how something deeper begins to form.

Ancient Love

Eventually I started thinking about a different kind of love.

The kind that forms slowly over time.

Not dramatic.

Not flashy.

Not the kind that gets written into songs.

But strong.

Ancient love is not the absence of struggle.

It is what remains after the struggle.

I painted that love to look like stone. The figures almost resemble rocks, with glowing openings like magma beneath the surface.

It is one of my favorite pieces.

That kind of love feels steady. Quiet. Enduring.

Very different from the kind of love we see celebrated in media.

Inner Connected

That line of thinking eventually led to a much larger question.

If a rock or tree could represent love, how big could the idea become?

Could a forest represent it?

Could a community?

Could humanity itself?

For my print club that month I created a large acrylic painting filled with intertwined figures.

I called it Inner Connected.

In that painting the openings in the figures moved from their hearts to their heads, suggesting a shared awareness or connection.

It was meant to be the beginning of a series, but like many questions in art, it led me somewhere unexpected.

And that is okay.

The question is still there.

I am sure the cycle will bring me back to it someday.

Because one thing has become very clear to me this year.

We have to keep asking questions and follow them wherever they lead.

For most of my life I tried to control everything. My work, my environment, even the direction of my art.

Lately I am discovering that the real magic happens when you stop trying to control the journey and simply follow it.

And right now that journey is full of questions I am excited to explore.

Maybe someday you will find yourself asking the same kinds of questions. If you do, I hope you follow them too.