I was born and raised on the Main Line of suburban Philadelphia, a key locale in the history of American painting and watercolor.

Our family would spend summers at Longport, New Jersey, eight miles long and a few blocks narrow between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Egg Harbor Bay. One summer, when I was five years old, my mother sat me down at the edge of the Atlantic with a brush and palette of watercolors, plunged a sheet of watercolor paper into the ocean, handed that to me and said, “Here. Practice your strokes.” As she went about her own watercolor sketch, I began my practice.

My mother decorated the walls of our house with a large vellum calligraphed page from a church document, a reproduction of the Chi-Rho from the Book of Kells, a George Biddle watercolor of a rural cuban scene, a large, pre-Raphaelite Madonna and Child bordered with orange fruit, blossoms and leaves. There was a tri-fold, Chinese watercolor scene of birds, bamboo and flowers on black with gold painted sides that stood in the corner of our living room behind which were tucked the bridge tables and chairs. screen By our front door hung a series of early botanical watercolor prints. I think that she must have chosen most of my first books for their watercolor illustrations. She’d make garden designs with watercolor and pencil on tracing paper and I was named for the title character in a children’s book illustrated in pencil and watercolor by the author about a French Canadian girl who (finally) learns to draw in pencil and paint in watercolor on the Gaspé Coast.

With such beginnings, it’s no surprise that I’ve dedicated my life as a painter to drawing and watercolor. In fact, it wasn’t till I started teaching the history of watercolor that I realized how many formative hours I’d spent surrounded by and examining watercolors up close and personal.

Because I had other skills to develop and situations to work out, it took a while for me to focus fully on watercolor. In my mid-20s, after studying with two fabulous teachers at Santa Monica College, I made photorealism portraits of, mostly, musical friends in L.A.; filmy, multi-glazed pieces with loads of pencil work from photos I’d take and then project and then labor over for days and days. I started showing as a watercolor artist and received my first professional commissions for these portraits starting in 1981.

Later, in Sarasota, FL, I turned to architectural portraits for a few years of, mostly, historic residences. Those were all made very early in the morning, plopped down on curbs in front of each building.

During my years of touring as a performing songwriter, I made small vignettes of scenes in Europe, New England and Charleston, SC, wherever I would find myself on days off. All of those paintings were made from a field kit of watercolors with a tiny brush on 4 x 6 blocks that I bought at a fab shop in Alkmaar, Holland. The buildings, travel scenes and subsequent work were all made en plein air, as they say.

Then I moved inside and made a series of large bouquets in Charlottesville, VA, The Age of Flowers. In 2006, I built a studio behind my home in Nashville, TN, where I finally let go of what I then thought was the crutch of pencil, of structure beneath my color and launched into a very long series called Landscape into Art which coincided with my watercolor blogging escapade.

I started teaching drawing and watercolor workshops over 20 years ago when I realized that the touring life as a solo musician was not healthy for me. In 2011, I created an in-depth, online course in drawing and watercolor for beginners. In early November 2016, I made a decision to read deep history and from that decision evolved a rather intensive series of online art history practicums through which we explore, with watercolor, the history of painting through different lenses 8-week courses. It’s been a lot of work and we all have learned a great deal.

Over the last 16 months, I’ve been making watercolor copies of historic paintings from, oh, 26,000 BC to the 1960s, mostly on Stillman & Birn Beta Series hard bound sketchbooks. I like the beta paper for it’s quality and versatility and keeping this project of almost 30 pieces bound together for the sake of order. (I’m a Virgo!)

Although Winsor Newton paints and Arches paper were pretty much the only game in town for pros when I was starting out, I now use a combo of M. Graham and Daniel Smith watercolors (with a few faves from the Lukas and Old Holland lines). I’m quite fond of Lana and Fabriano papers but have done loads of work on what was once upon a time called Indian Village paper that is very heavy and very rough.

My creative process is ultimately intuitive. I have worked diligently for decades developing my technical skills but have never followed formulas or used technique tricks. I have learned to bow to my relationship with watercolor, which I consider to be a living medium, and allow water and color to teach me about my own process and what creative expression is available to us all when we check our egos at the door.

My work is really project driven. So, if I’m illustrating, making a new series of paintings, what have you, I allow the drawing and watercolor to serve the project. Although that being said, there are highly recognizable stylistic elements to whatever I make with watercolor. Some of those, like line and stroke, have always been with me. Other stylistic elements have developed through my practice and relationship with watercolor.

Nature, light and the medium of watercolor itself inspire me. While I have a line-up of interesting new projects in the wings, I’m fond of working on animals, and landscapes come through me intuitively with no model or thought.

I’m grateful that I was introduced to watercolor at the edge of the ocean in fresh air and sunlight. It connected me forever to the living quality of this medium that I love so deeply.

Join me for my next free webinar on a Brief History of Watercolor!  

I love drinking fresh water, taking baths, standing under a hot shower, swimming, walking in the rain and on the sand along the shores of our oceans, rowing boats on lakes, canoeing in rivers and  and, of course, painting with water.

I truly take some of my greatest pleasures in life because of water.

There is no life on Earth as we know it without water. It's what gives our Mother her nickname, the Blue Planet because almost two-thirds of her surface is covered with water, so rare a compound in our solar system.
​
We are, as humans, made up of mostly water. 78% as infants. Less as the weight of the world presses on. 

And yet, so many of us take water for granted. (Here I refrain from launching into a rant with a long list of common, recent assaults on our water.) In many locations, water is not at all easy to come by. 

it's a privilege to have water running from a tap, to be able to wash out and fill up my glasses of water to paint with. I am grateful for water every day. 

I'm grateful to have dedicated my painting and teaching practice to the medium of watercolor. It's been a pleasure and privilege.

I am writing this at the the Full Sap (Sleepy) Moon.  

When I lived by the beach, I checked the tide chart daily to plan my day. Because I was keeping such a close eye on the tides and the moon phases, I noticed more than ever the remarkable differences in my body at the new and full moons.

At MIT, we kept a "Full Moon" file in the President's Office to keep mementos of happenings on just those very days.

Living by the lunar cycle makes so much sense to me especially because our bodies and the earth are mostly made of water and because the moon has such a dramatic effect on the tides and our bodies and minds. 

Even if you don't intentionally follow the lunar cycle, in various ways it's built in to some cultural marks. For example, did you know that the dates of both Passover and Easter are set in relation to the full moon following the Vernal Equinox? It's true. 

The Emergency of Presence(this sounds like a de Chirico title!)
Happy Vernal Equinox!It's the first day of Spring (Yay!) up here in the Northern Hemisphere. The beginning of the astrological calendar. Everything is budding and bursting or just about to (under a fresh layer of snow).

While painting yesterday, I was thinking about how we need to be absolutely present as we work with watercolor. Certainly not the first time I've thought or talked about that!)

There are few experiences that force us into being absolutely present for any length of time. Meditation is usually a nice try but even masters of meditation, Pema Chödrön for example, reveal that stilling our wild minds is a practice that helps tremendously but rarely leads to long periods of being here now.

Chödrön's teacher, Chögyam Trungpa wrote a great little book called Meditation in Action. There's a lot to that title because, in my experience, some of the greatest practices that keep us present are those involving some kind of physical engagement. Which makes sense because, after all, we are living in physical, temporal structures. Playing music, tennis, and, definitely, painting with watercolor are those sorts of activities that require physical attention with temporal limits. We have to be absolutely present or we'll lose our place, miss a ball, ruin a painting.

Emergencies are another sort of experience that require our complete presence. You know that when an emergency arises you can't be thinking about the past or the future, you are suddenly, solving immediate problems with your full attention and you can usually, in retrospect, break your memory of the entire experience into a narrative of milliseconds.

The word emergency comes from the Latin emergere "arise, bring to light" and, of course shares that root with emerge.

Spring is an emergency of sorts, isn't it? One day, there's snow on the ground. Then, suddenly, a crocus. The cherry trees bud and blossom. A cast of color passes over bare branches and our flowering friends burst forth again. And, boy, are we happy to see them.

Painting in watercolor is my favorite meditation practice (though it's more than that).  An images arises and is brought to light, through light, actually. It requires all the focus that any emergency requires. But don't take my word for it...​
​

There is a full moon tonight

in Virgo at 7:51pm ET. From what I understand, it's a perfect opportunity to drop what no longer serves us and accept the power to make structural changes in our lives that can allow us to alter the course of our path a bit and feel better. Everyone knows (don't they?) that if we feel better within ourselves, it naturally follows that we can help others feel better, too.

What if the greatest journey of your life has yet to begin? Some journeys are launched with just the tilt of a head. Add a little practice of looking at yourself differently, at life differently, put one foot in front of the other and wonder what new magic life holds in store.

My suggestion is that you mark this full moon by deciding what it is you're going to shed. It's not a bad idea to write out your musings on paper and then write down (with intention) what it is you decide to shed. Then let it go. Burn the paper if you have to.

In preparation, you can spend the day collecting items for the trash or give away. It's absolutely true that clearing out physical clutter leads to clearing psychic and emotional clutter.

Make like a snake and shed some skin. Figuratively, of course. It couldn't hurt.

Isn't it fabulous how odd experiences, chance encounters, random conversations, opening to a particular paragraph in a book, or hearing some snippet of a podcast or radio program can nudge you around a corner in your mind so that you find yourself in brand new lighting, looking upon new possibilities?

It is so easy to cling to certain things that are not working. Sometimes we cling to things, (people, places, thoughts) unconsciously or out of fear and don't even realize that we can change. With intention. Relatively effortlessly.

After an interesting week during which I tinkered with problem solving for a set of issues on my back burner, I woke up to the new year and thought... wait a minute... I'm going to change these things and make life better. I can write ad nauseum about change and reinvention but
here's one thing I've changed.

I've changed how I am offering and how you can take my online courses in drawing and watercolor.

I haven't changed the content, per se, (although that's always being tweaked to make it better), but I've changed some dates and how you can take the course. I'm excited! For you!

So, this Wednesday, February 21 at 8PM ET, I'm hosting a free webinar as a preview for my upcoming foundation course in March. Sign up for the free webinar here.

Read all about it.

​Sign up for the webinar. It's going to be fun. A little taste of what it's like to work and play in my online course. No pressure, no obligation except that you do have to do a bit of scribbling before Wednesday evening (which is why I'm sending this post out early in the week).

Simplify, simplify. Click here to learn more about See Here Now.
​
Click here to join webinar on Wednesday evening.

Get the message? ;-)

God.

It blew my little mind and I can still feel the reverberation of my five-year-old consciousness now. That experience forever informed my understanding of that word and my concept of god. 

Even though I wasn't thinking then about the blank page, per se, I certainly have since. 

There is a sacred quality to the blank page whether it's an actual piece of paper, a canvas, project, performance, or the day ahead. However you may think about the word god, the divine, source, creative spirit or some other construct around that concept, the best results of taking action on any creative endeavor is often a matter of getting out of our own way.

All creative processes are rife with insecurities, mistakes, fear of judgement, confusions as to how to start, confusion as to where we are mid-way and how to proceed, how to complete. Almost without exception, I get lost somewhere in the middle of every project and I have learned to either stop and walk away briefly or find some thread of faith to push through and continue. I think that every creative act requires a certain amount of faith to begin and certainly to follow through to some conclusion.

In On the Question of Form, Kandinsky writes about the creative process in terms of the white, fertilizing ray and the black, death-bringing hand. Essentially, he's describing the opening up of our experience to the great unknown and our all too human tendency to cut that connection off with ego fears and constricting habits of thought.

It's a delicate balance. We have to learn technique, presentation, formal constructs, but then, eventually, to let go of those things and take the plunge to make that first mark or shepherd that first mark along. It's not so much a balance really, it's more like a dance. We have to give into the unknown and not worry too much about making a misstep, trusting  that the momentum will probably carry us along.

Trusting takes practice. It's sort of okay when you're alone writing or drawing or painting. Less so when you're working with a rare  piece of wood or stone. As long as you don't quit in surrender to failure.

When a novice musician steps up to perform in public and makes a mistake, the worst thing to do is to stop and start again. Everyone makes errors in performance. Once upon a time in my 20s, I was performing a long guitar solo in the midst of a song and completely lost my way. To this day, I have no idea how I found my way out of that solo and back into the song to the end. I did not know what I was doing but I did not stop. (I did, however, break out in a cold sweat.) What I do remember is that the best guitarist in the audience came backstage to tell me what an awesome solo I'd played. I still laugh about that. And when Leo Kottke did the same thing live on Prairie Home Companion, I sweat bullets for him until he came out the other end to great applause.

Trust and faith in the creative force, keeping ourselves open and side-stepping fears and other ego concerns are de rigueur for the artist. So is follow through and knowing when to pause for breath and reflection. It's also, of course, a good practice for living because what is living if not a creative act? But, let me pull this back to the drawing board.

Drawing and painting, especially watercolor, are performances, too. Phil Geiger at UVA taught me that and I've been grateful to him ever since. 

Give in to the sacred dance. Like the remains of a saint, the result on paper is a relic of experience.

As for mistakes, OMG, I have made way more than my fair share. But when it comes to drawing and watercolor, in the end I have to say...

​Oh well, it's just a piece of paper.

The word perfection comes from the Latin perficere, meaning to complete, to finish, to bring to an end. Sure, the word has additional meanings before that mark and since but for the sake of this post, let's focus on that main definition.

It follows, then, that imperfection merely means that which is not complete, unfinished.

Isn't that the state of being human? Aren't we perfect only when we are finished with our earthly journey?

Near the end of his life, Leonardo (as in da Vinci) went through his notebooks and wrote over and over again, "Tell me if anything was ever done".  Yes, Leonardo struggled with perfectionism.

So do many of my students. I've attracted many perfectionists to my drawing and watercolor workshops and courses over the years. As a recovering perfectionist, I recognize them and their suffering right away. I understand the syndrome and coax them (sometimes more successfully than others) through the process of letting one thing or another go. 

Even if students aren't outright perfectionists, there's a more subtle, related suffering. A constant nagging sense of displeasure or defeat (or both) when showing work they consider subpar. 

I understand that, too. Especially over this past year, when I've only had time, for the most part, to make mad dash demos under pressure of stupidly short amounts of time and (often) interruption, I then present whatever results as an example of my abilities. Actually, the results are rushed demonstrations of how to but still, my ego is crestfallen with the results and the what other people think nattering is super annoying.

Except when you have to at least take minimal, imperfect action.

That's the ruling wisdom of my world right this sec. So... I'll keep it short.

See Here Now 2018, my next online course in drawing and watercolor, starts on February 21.

Click here to learn more about the course(s).
​
Click here to apply.