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The Beauty of Drawing

The Beauty of Drawing

I have lost a favorite book. Many years ago, I knew exactly where to find it. But a fire that ripped through my house a couple of years back took it away from me, along with everything else. All was lost. The fire destroyed about 6,00 homes in Sonoma County in the...
Spark of Genius

Spark of Genius

“Love for our neighbour, being made of creative attention, is analogous to genius,” wrote the philosopher Simone Weil in 1942. She probably could have found a simpler way to get her point across. But she is a philosopher after all. That spark of genius is a...
When Letters Turn On Me

When Letters Turn On Me

I follow an idiosyncratic signal that tells me when to knock off creative work for the day. I spend long hours staring at either a computer screen or a yellow legal pad of paper when writing notes or preparing a first draft. But I do not decide upon a fixed length of...
Art Follows Its Own Path

Art Follows Its Own Path

My mother is a textile artist. She works within the vocabulary of quilting. For many years, my mother has said that each piece of work she creates has a life of its own, meaning that the journey from inception to completion is never a straight-forward path. The...
The Creative Mediator

The Creative Mediator

There is an oft-repeated theme running through these posts. The creative journey is an ongoing dialogue between the rational mind and the collective unconscious. Engagement between these two sides of the brain sometimes needs a navigator, for the different aspects of...
There Are Always More

There Are Always More

Sometimes we get stuck inside our heads. We become fixated upon a particular idea. We turn it over and over in our minds, seeing it from all different angles. This process is not healthy for the soul. Don’t fall into the trap of ruminating on an idea, worried at the...