Safe, conventional work is a ticket to oblivion.
I read that in a little book by graphic designer George Lois. I remember it always--especially when my painting falls short of what I think it should be--when all those little "shoulds" and "oughts" crowd out my voice, my colors, my feelings. Art is a house with many mansions, many chambers, many doors, and many windows. We all know that and yet the pressure to conform can be paralyzing. So many times I've finished a painting and wondered why it didn't look the way I thou
The Romance of Deep Time
For two years I've been working on a picture book about Chinese dinosaurs called Forest of the Feathered Dragons. It's a way for me to think about the major themes of my creative life: history, memory, ruins, lost worlds, and most especially deep time. So much of this can be summed up in Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias": I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a sha
