A Mindful Life

Well, the lab results are in, confirming what my body communicated to me all weekend. No more pregnancy. At the same time, the company for which I worked last spring has an opportunity for a position that I am considering. I’m at the fork in the road, in the sense that if I took this [...]

“Elegance,” 8″ x 8″ oil pastel on sketch paper

Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: “Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? Can I visualize a print — my own personal statement of what I feel and want to convey — from the subject before me?” –Ansel [...]

This is my dad. He’s an introspective person. I get my voracious reading habit from him, as well as my inclination to tinker with words. He was a grade-school teacher, and an excellent one at that. For years I ran into adults who, upon learning my name, would ask if my father had been the [...]

I do wish I could get ahold of this book! Alas, only in Britain… What is drawing? How does one learn it? It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. How is one to get through that wall — since pounding at [...]

No explanation or story behind this. Just an image my brain served up. “Emerging,” 9″ x 12″ sketch paper with oil pastel

Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it. –Alfred Hitchcock

This is also my contribution for Illustration Friday. The topic for this week is “free.” It’s a little doodle I made in my Moleskin as we waited for the HP movie to begin. The movie, by the way, was really good. Some aspects of the book were sacrificed for the movie, I think to simplify [...]

“What’s Your Poison?” 16″ x 18″ sketch paper with acrylic paint and collage

Life’s too short to read crappy books, especially fiction. And that’s my assessment of Tom Robbins’ Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. Sorry, Tom. I love your work, except this. The second-person perspective is jarring, and I just could not find anything remotely likeable about the main character whom I was supposed to “be” as I [...]