Question: Does the work in your sketchbook serve your work outside of the sketchbook in any particular way? I know many people use the sketchbook images as ‘studies’ for larger works. For me, my sketchbook is more of a way to keep in practice, and there is no direct or obvious connection between the work I do there and my ‘pieces’. Can you tell us about how your sketchbook fits into your art practice as a whole?

My travel sketchbooks are definitely NOT studies for larger works. For example, there were amazing super old live oak trees, and I purposely did not paint them in my sketchbook, because I want to go huge with them in collage, and if I paint them in my sketchbook, I will have satisfied that urge to a lesser degree, and will never do it. Besides, I saw them while hiking with others, so merely took gobs of photos; however, I do not paint from photo references either.

To me art is never about copying. It is about drinking in loads of mindfulness of shapes, colors, textures, differences, juxtapositions, and seeing how that integrates as more than the sum of those parts when playing with materials and techniques. It is a synthesis that happens so deeply it is subjective.

So my representational sketchbook practice plays a role of contributing to that mindfulness, by making me fully aware while I am there, and taking in many more cues and perceptions than if I didn’t do it. There is also a bit of me keeping my hand doing art, since I’m happier when I do, but when I’m out of the studio, it is more about really seeing for me that contributes in some obscure way to my abstract work.

As another example, I’m heading to Maine soon to plein air paint (an annual event with other painters on Monhegan Island) and again, I’ll paint the landscape because I like to be in it, like a fisherman fishes as an excuse to be out there. Those plein air paintings of mine are fine and for those other people would be the end result of their practice, but for me, they are just a fond memory of a fun time, not the work I care about as ‘pieces’ at all.

My abstract work pulls from the subconscious, the metaphysical, even the synthesis of ideas, or expressions of concepts, which my representational work barely hints at and is too surface to satisfy me.

Maybe you could say what I consider my “real pieces” are scuba dives, while plain air painting is snorkeling, sketching is from the boat, and photography is from the shore. I want to go DEEP in my “real work.” Maybe that why some people resonate deeply with my work–thrilled by it– while it baffles others who have never been so far down in the metaphorical water?

Question: In photography, how do you decide between color or black and white?

If the scene is either mostly about light or shadow, or about texture, I take it in black and white. Most of what I’m attracted to is so much about color, it is easy for me to discern the difference. For example, lots of red in a photo can be very exciting, but take that in black and white, the red reads as a mid tone- a boring grey, that is not at all compelling. So for a good black and white photo, you need lots of contrast between light lights and dark darks. In a color photo contrast can be achieved in other ways, for example by complimentary colors. However many compositional tools, such as shape, line, density, repetition, movement, etc, are great appreciated in any photograph.

Question: Is this amount of travel for you unusual? Are you exhausted by it?

No to both questions. We’ve had an unusual amount of opportunities crop up this year, as well as at the end of last year, and we just embraced them. There were decades here where I went nowhere and thought I never would. So I don’t take all this travel for granted, and soaked up every bit of it, absolutely drenched in gratitude for it. I’ll be assimilating all that I saw, heard, tasted and felt on these trips for a long time.

While gone, I took practice calls, and still painted. They were vacations from my usual routines (and from cooking)– we have a phrase we use in our family– they were a “pattern interrupt.” I think it is good to step outside your usual sometimes to continue to grow.  In many ways, however, they were not vacations, since I felt so full of heightened awareness that I felt “on” every second.  It is good, and frankly replenishing, to develop this level of mindfulness, and then bring it back to your ordinary life.

However, all that said, I didn’t swim at the quarry much this season, or paint large paintings outside in my driveway, or read in the Adirondack chairs on our front porch. We missed our homegrown raspberries and had friends come to pick them while we were gone. I like being here very much.

There is infinite good out there as well as right here, and interfacing with it in fresh thankfulness is the point!  And I’m headed off to be social and paint with friends in Maine, while still working for others in the practice, so I’m not done. I think it is like any muscle, the more you use it the strong and more flexible it gets.

I don’t believe in burn out, and I don’t plan on retiring. My spirituality and my art are my job, and that won’t stop for me. So I’ll have to fit in all those activities people wait for until they retire in the meantime. This is working for me, and it seems to be fine with my clients too. They know I am available to them, regardless. That said, 2026 so far has much less travel planned, and I’m looking forward to that too, planning then on digging deep in other ways.

Ask your questions in the comments or contact me here.