In the last few years, I’ve tapped back into this old habit of making visual art. It has had some exciting and unexpected repercussions on my life. I have found a community of artists, mostly on Instagram, including “urban sketchers,” who embody a way of working that I admire. Their approach to visual art is less about making a masterpiece and more about developing a relationship with their environment. “Urban sketchers” keep their materials simple and easily accessible. They work on location, never from photographs, forcing themselves to stay in the moment with their subjects. The clock ticks, the light changes, the subject moves, but they resist going back to their neat and tidy studios where they can endlessly fuss over tiny details. Even the discomfort that may arise from holding a pen on a cold, windy afternoon gets transferred into the work. To them, the battle to achieve perfection is better off lost and they celebrate spontaneity and humanity through lines and color. This is the philosophy I’ve been trying to embrace as I make art, music, and… life. It’s an admission that my work will inevitably reflect my humanity, with all its joys and limitations.

One example of this philosophy in action is presented in the last scene of this video. Last summer, as I stood on a rock at Buttermilk Falls, near Long Lake, NY, I looked up at this incredible scene of water crashing beneath a big open sky, all framed in trees. I remember thinking, “there is no way to draw this. I am not equipped to draw this.” And then, fully realizing that today’s effort would likely be tomorrow’s recycling, I started to follow the lines I saw with my pen. I just kept going until I filled up two pages. If you make it to the end of my video, you’ll see that crazy sketch come to life.

As you watch, you can also look for the dog that I saw jumping into a lake in Minnesota, and the caterpillar that bobbed its head and crawled across a picnic table at Harriman State Park. They all made it into my little picture show. I hope you enjoy it. Please let me know what you think if you get a minute. I’d love to hear from you.