Welcome—or welcome back—to this space. I’ll start with a note of gratitude (and perhaps a little humility) for the quiet stretch between blog posts. Life has been full in all the ways that matter, and in the midst of it, I’ve been deeply thankful for a renewed sense of connection—an ever-growing community of people engaging with and encouraging my work. Much of this recent chapter has been shaped by a project especially close to my heart: Theo of Golden, a novel by the wonderfully gifted...

My brothers and I grew up in an “artistic” household. Of course, we were unaware of this at the time. We thought we were normal kids from a normal family. We knew our parents were involved in the arts and mother painted and dad did something called “architecture.” As we got older we began to appreciate the significance of our family “artistic-ness.” Our parents raised us in a home full of beautiful things in an atmosphere of tolerance, encouragement, praise, and affection. Art, I came to...

I taught figure drawing for more than three decades, hosting a group drawing session in my studio every Friday morning. There is nothing better to hone an artist's drawing skills than to confront the nude figure, and bring that figure to life on a piece of paper. It is not about style or technique; working from the figure is about focus and truly seeing. It is about being intimately aware, not only of the model, but of the environment that the model inhabits. Hence, in my work – at least in...