Resources

Most days, I no longer think of “studio time” as a separate block on the calendar. The work has spread into everything else. I might be rinsing dishes, arranging pens that have finally unclogged, or making notes about the day’s errands when a line or pattern catches my attention. Art no longer begins with a blank page; it begins wherever I happen to be paying attention.2025 Mini #17, 2.5x3.5 in., ink on paper That recognition has altered my perspective on creative practice. Drawing, cooking, walking, and cleaning all rely on the same capacities: observation, repetition, and adjustment. Each activity requires focus within its constraints. A 2½ × 3½-inch drawing forces choices about scale and composition; a dinner deadline forces decisions about timing and sequence. What unites them is method—a disciplined, almost research-like approach to noticing how perception works in real-time.When I was teaching, I used to describe scholarship as the craft of paying sustained attention to ordinary things until they disclose more than we expected. I find myself doing that again, only now the medium is ink instead of text. The page becomes a field site. I observe, record, and revise. The variables are pressure, speed, and rhythm rather than citation, argument, and evidence, but the logic is the same: careful description produces understanding.Constraint is part of that method. Limited tools, limited time, limited space—these boundaries clarify what matters. My favorite pens clogged months ago, so I switched to a set of colored pens I’ve hardly used. The change altered everything about my process: the rhythm of the line, the speed of line-making, even the way I breathe while drawing. Limits become data. They show how attention behaves when conditions shift.2025 Mini #19, 2.5x3.5 in., ink on paperWhat I learn on paper transfers elsewhere. The pause before overworking a drawing becomes the pause before overexplaining or overreacting in conversation. The ability to stop, look, and reset—to acknowledge that I’ve gone too far or not far enough—is the same skill across contexts. Art, in that sense, functions as a training ground for perception.There’s nothing mysterious about this. It’s simply the repetition of noticing. The more I repeat, the more subtle the distinctions become: between one kind of line and another, between habit and genuine seeing. Practice sharpens the instrument that makes both art and life intelligible—the mind paying attention to its own process.2025 Mini #20, 2.5x3.5 in., ink on paperThe daily drawings have become a kind of record of this experiment. Some succeed; others collapse halfway through. Collectively, they form a logbook of perception under constraint. They also remind me that consistency matters more than inspiration. A single drawing rarely tells the story; the accumulation does.I sometimes think this is what I was always teaching, though I didn’t frame it that way at the time. In the classroom, I asked students to slow down with a text or a film, to observe structure before interpretation. The goal wasn’t belief or agreement; it was precision of attention. I’m still pursuing that, only now the syllabus is shorter and the outcomes are measured in lines rather than pages.If there’s a thread connecting these activities—art, writing, caregiving, cooking—it’s the refusal to separate them. Each demands the same thing: presence with material conditions as they are. Ink runs out; recipes fail; conversations drift. The task is to return, adjust, and keep looking. Over time, that practice forms its own kind of stability.2025 Mini #22, 2.5x3.5 in., ink on paperAttention, then, is not a virtue or special personality trait. It’s a method—a way of being attuned to experience. It asks, “What’s actually happening right now?” and waits for the answer. The drawings are simply evidence that the question was asked. These pieces will also soon form the basis of a new Patreon project—a space to share process, sketches, and reflections each month. Like the drawings themselves, it’s less about product and more about tracing attention over time.Maybe that’s the point of this stage of my work: not to produce enduring artifacts, but to refine perception itself. To keep training the eye and hand to register the world with slightly greater accuracy, whether on paper or in the course of an ordinary day.

Since my last post, life has changed in ways I never imagined: a divorce, a move from Indiana to California, and the start of an entirely new rhythm. I’m still drawing every day, but my focus has widened. I write, I cook, I apply for jobs, I manage household logistics. The life I imagined during my sabbatical—long, uninterrupted studio days—has given way to something messier and, in its own way, more honest.   2025 Mini #6, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paperMornings usually start with writing. I work on essays for my two ongoing blogs: Aspie Art Journey, where I write about life as an artist with Asperger’s and how that lens shapes my perspective on the world; and Dating App Diaries, which chronicles the equally unpredictable world of human connection. Both projects grew out of the same instinct that drives my drawings: to observe closely, reflect honestly, and keep creating even when life doesn’t line up neatly.When the writing slows, I move on to practical things—job applications, phone calls, the endless details of caregiving, and keeping a household running. It’s not glamorous, but it’s part of the work. I’ve started to see these moments—cooking for my parents, cleaning, organizing supplies—as an extension of art-making. They’re grounded, rhythmic, physical. The same kind of attention that steadies my line work can also steady the rest of my life.   2025 Mini #13, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paperLate afternoons are for drawing, even if only for an hour or so. My large-format days are on hold for now; most of my recent work consists of small 2½ × 3½-inch ink drawings. The pens I used for years finally clogged, so I’m experimenting with new colors and tools. I enjoy the challenge of small-scale pieces—they require precision and focus without the demands of long hours. They also fit perfectly with a new project I’m planning: a Patreon that will feature these drawings as part of a monthly subscription. Alongside them, I’m sketching designs for a new 4×6 linocut print series. Both ideas bring me back to the tactile side of creativity—the ink, the carving, the test prints, the final prints, and the repetition of making something by hand.   2025 Mini #18, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paperEvenings are when I reconnect with the spirit behind all this: podcasts about functional medicine, the intersections of Buddhist meditation and neuropsychology, or Spanish language lessons. I also read, yet rarely finish a single book before starting others. Sometimes I draw to music; sometimes I just look at what I made that day and think about how it fits into the larger story of my life. That’s when my mind drifts to Lines on the Spectrum, my illustrated memoir, or to the online course I’m developing, “Art as Spiritual Practice.” The course explores the same process I go through daily: using creativity to stay present, grounded, and aware. It’s designed primarily for non-artists, hobbyists, and anyone who feels a pull toward new, transformative experiences, even if they’ve never called themselves creative.   2025 Mini #23, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paperAnyone can become more creative despite the oft-repeated refrain, “I’m not an artist; I have no talent.” The course combines practical exercises with a rigorous examination of terms such as artist and spiritual, a concept that is hotly debated among scholars of religion. The course is a hybrid, combining experiential and reflective elements. Participants practice art-making to encounter transformation firsthand, while also engaging the critical study of language, meaning, and presence.I now see that what I loved most about teaching—the chance to help others notice, pause, and see differently—still guides my days. I just do it now with ink, words, and color instead of “lectures” and syllabi. Art remains my way of thinking about meaning and presence, except now I practice it one small act of attention at a time, line by line, word by word.

A few weeks ago, I stood in a sea of people at a Devo and B-52’s concert, feeling like I’d been transported back to the 1980s. I could see the waves of color from the stage lights, neon, and pulsing. It struck me that this, too, was a kind of art practice—a reminder that movement, rhythm, and attention are inseparable. Sometimes I meditate, and sometimes I find music has similar effects. The musical energy that others might find chaotic calms me. What some might label “angry” or “loud” music—whatever that means—has always soothed my Aspie brain. No, I’m not suggesting that Devo or the B-52’s fit those categories. 025 Mini #7, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paper That concert reminded me how fully the sensory world animates everything I do. The driving beat, the lights, the crowd—it all felt like a visual composition in motion. When I draw, I’m doing something similar: tracing the rhythm of sound and motion until the lines on the page start to breathe. There’s no boundary between listening, seeing, and creating. Presence isn’t achieved by blocking out the world, but by stepping fully into it.This, for me, is the foundation of Art as Spiritual Practice. It isn’t about ritual, belief, or meditation in the conventional sense. It’s about attention—fierce, sustained attention—to the moment as it unfolds through color, sound, line, and touch. Making art slows perception. It opens a space between thought and movement where something larger than language happens.  2025 Mini #11, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paper I don’t pretend to know what to call that something. Some might call it spiritual, while others might use the language of psychology, neurobiology, philosophy, or anthropology. To me, those vantage points all circle the same experience: the shift from distraction to presence, from noise to stillness. It doesn’t matter whether the source is a rock concert, a blank sheet of paper, or a kitchen sink filled with dishes. Each offers a chance to inhabit awareness more fully.The term “spiritual” itself is hotly contested—too elastic for some, too personal for others. Scholars of religion debate whether its very malleability renders it useless for any serious analysis. I tend to think of it as a working placeholder, a word that gestures toward the transformative quality of human experience when we’re paying close attention. Yes, this is among the varied and problematic definitions of spirituality, and I’m fine with that. I’ve moved toward immersing myself in the experience of art-making and away from debates over how to classify these experiences. Of course, that’s a perk of “retirement,” I suppose. I no longer need to engage in those debates, important though they may be.  2025 Mini #8, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paper That’s the spirit behind my forthcoming course, also called Art as Spiritual Practice. It’s designed primarily for non-artists, hobbyists, and anyone who feels the urge to express themselves creatively but doesn’t know where to start. You don’t need to identify as “spiritual,” and you certainly don’t need to believe in anything otherworldly. You just need curiosity—and a willingness to stay with your own process long enough to notice what shifts.Alongside the course, I’m also beginning to share my own sketchbook practice more publicly. The series of small 2½ × 3½-in. ink drawings I’ve been making—each one a study in rhythm, attention, and constraint—will soon appear in a monthly format for those who want to follow the work as it unfolds. 2025 Mini #12, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paper The course mixes practical exercises with reflection. We’ll explore how a daily sketchbook habit can become a form of grounding, how color and rhythm shape mood, and how repetition itself—the steady return to the page—creates meaning over time. Participants will also wrestle with questions that don’t have easy answers: What does it mean to call something spiritual? Who gets to decide who is or is not an artist? What happens when we replace the pursuit of perfection with the practice of presence?In that sense, the course isn’t just about making art; it’s about re-learning how to be with ourselves. Each drawing, each attempt, becomes a mirror for how we approach uncertainty, judgment, and even joy. There’s a moment—whether I’m drawing, cooking, or listening to Devo—when the line between effort and ease dissolves. That’s where transformation begins.I’ve spent much of my life teaching students to look closely, to question assumptions, to sit with ambiguity. I’m still doing that, but now the classroom is my desk, the lesson plan is a page of ink lines, and the students are anyone willing to pick up a pen and see what happens.Presence, not product, is the point. Art becomes the way we practice paying attention. And when we do, even the loudest music becomes a form of stillness.