New Year, Art Goals, & Inspiration
Catching Up With You + Favorite Books of 2024
Hello, friends!
Happy New Year! As 2025 begins, I know it might not exactly feel like a fresh start for everyone. There’s a lot of upheaval in the world. Hope can feel harder to hold onto. Still, I think there’s value in finding small ways to create meaning—whether through art, shared experiences, or just simple acts of connection. “There is a light there never goes out,”/Morrissey and all that. Or perhaps if you prefer, I think this gentleman knows a bit of the substance he’s on about:
“Art is to console those who are broken by life.” — Vincent van Gogh
Maybe this year can be less about solving the big things all at once, and more about contributing to the things that bring light and steadiness, however small they may seem.
This newsletter is a bit different from my last one. After a long and winding dive into essay-ish writing, I’ve realized that it may be best left to those who feel truly called to it. For me, this space is about sharing my creative process, which is the only thing at this point in my life I feel entitled to claim any expertise in. It’s also about things that I’m learning or which inspire me along the way, while hopefully providing something of value to you in the process. So, think of this update as a friendly, no-frills check-in. I’d love to share a bit with you about what I’ve been up to.
Reconnecting with Drawing
In 2021, I started drawing as a way to step back from technology and recharge. Burnt out from music—a passion I’d poured nearly 20 years into, in which I played simultaneous roles of writer, performer, producer, mixer, all of which eventually required long hours at the computer—I needed something restorative. Drawing became a form of meditation, a chance to unplug and focus on doing something directly with one’s hands, no zeros, no ones. I was looking for a piece of coal and a cave wall at that point.
What I didn’t expect was to fall in love with it so completely. I’d spent a lot of time drawing as a child, even saying that I wanted to grow up and work for Disney (if I wasn’t too busy collecting deep sea creatures as a marine biologist), but stopped almost entirely by the time I entered college. When drawing started to click again as an adult, it felt like a return home.
Starting up again, the only self-imposed goal was simple: draw every day. I wasn’t worried about perfection or technique, just the act of creating. I drew during quiet moments, often while listening to music or between sessions at my online tutoring job. Eventually, I began to take on little challenges, such as the popular “100 Heads” challenge, fully enjoying the surprise and delight of watching the trail of progress left behind as I went.
Now, as I step into 2025, I want to recapture that spirit of daily exploration and play. But this time, I’m adding something new to the mix: oil painting.
Learning to Paint: A Beginner’s Mind
Let me be honest—learning to paint has been humbling. No. It’s been f***ing frustrating. But I’ve always wanted to learn to oil paint, even if it was a largely romanticized and far-off idea. I never set out to become a graphite artist, but I tend to do whatever I do quite intensely (like remember that time you needed to understand your own behavioral pathology and so you went to grad school to become a therapist? No? My student loans seem to recall something a little like that).
Also, once you get kind of good at something, it feels safe.
The transition from draftsman to painter has been unexpectedly terrifying. I think this is because I’ve never painted (divine revelation here), and sometimes haven’t realized how much drawing as a child helped account for my quick growth once returned to it as an adult. I’ve felt a bit guilty about this on Instagram, where it might seem like my progress in a couple short years skyrocketed out of the blue. I don’t want others learning to draw see that and feel like they’re falling short. Now I am getting a real taste of what that’s really like; actually being a total beginner in mid-life.
But here’s the mindset: there’s something about being a beginner again, facing those moments of frustration and doubt, and choosing to press on anyway, that is so extremely life-giving. It’s actually so beautiful.
When I was burned out on music, I’ve come to realize how much my mindset was at fault– once you’re expected to be an expert in something, it’s much harder to inhabit a beginner’s mind. Your standards all have to exist on what we call a “professional” level. That’s when perfectionism, that primordial evil of behavioral pathologies, dressed in a suit and tie, appears.
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” — Shunryu Suzuki
And but so here I am giving myself permission to fail publicly (at both this newsletter and my oil painting, thank you very much), as I share with you my journey over the course of 2025, and part of that will include updates on my oil painting progress, which I plan to upkeep. I’m also drawing daily again, and plan to keep that up as best I can, in the seasons in which I can. Drawing is one of the best things that’s happened to me in my life, and I want to share this joy with you.
Art tunes our sensitivity; it teaches us to listen, to see, to trust. Whether it’s painting, playing music, writing, dancing, playing soccer– there is absolutely nothing like the feeling of being in a state of flow, the sacred space, that I know half of you are knowingly nodding your heads about while reading this. Because it’s not necessarily about the the end result, in my belief. The greatest masters in history are worms in the cosmic garden of God’s infinite existence; author of every. beautiful. thing. Doesn’t matter how good X person is to Z person when the gap is, in reality, infinitesimal as soon as its measured on this cosmic scale. Like comparing the strongest ant to the weakest one when judging by human strength. But it is the participation in this always-running, ancient river of creativity that changes who we are. And when people change on a fundamental level, learning to listen, to see, to trust– the world grows collectively better for it.
“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” — Robert Henri
Inspiring Things
Lastly, I thought I’d share with you some of the things that are serving well for artistic inspiration in these colder, wintery days.
After eight years married and 100% not at all understanding how people can just sit quietly reading in bed next to each other and not feel weird about it, my wife got me a bedside table and a reading lamp last May and something clicked; a bonanza ever since. Making up for lost time, I guess. A return home.
And but so I’ll leave you with my ten of my personal favorite reads from last year, in no particular order. These moved me, inspired me, or simply stayed with me long after I finished them. My reading is for pleasure, mind you. It is currently marked off in my life as a safe place with no impositions on myself for betterment. I find this lends itself to reading a whole lot. I also rediscovered fantasy last year. Also a return home.
1. Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay (1990) *
2. The Once and Future King by T.H. White (1958) *
3. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (2022)
4. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938) *
5. Boy’s Life by Robert R. McCammon (1991)
6. Foster by Claire Keegan (2010) *
7. Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb (1996) *
8. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951)
9. The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2020)
10. Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (2023)
* = new favorite authors (criteria constituted of having read at least 3 of their works)
May your 2025 be as full of inspiring voices as these, no matter the source. Thanks for reading my newsletter and see you in two weeks! 🤓 - Kevin
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