"There is no such thing as the unknown, only things temporarily hidden." Captain James T. Kirk Creativity is a messy business Enter Francis Bacon , not the sizzling breakfast kind but the icon in the artistic pantheon. He didn’t cover up the blemishes on his canvas; instead, he transformed the errant strokes into unsung heroes of the composition. He once said, "And sometimes when I've been working I've been so disgusted by it that I grab the brush and put brush marks all over it, thinking...

Clap! My hands, came together as I became fully aware that my life was finite and I would die some day. I was 10 years old. I remember thinking that I have only a limited time to achieve my life goals and so made a pact with myself that I would make haste, hopefully fulfill them and make death bring closure to my life with another clap. This action (clapping) I later surmised was my way of demarcating the movie of my life, much like a movie set clapperboard might punctuate the start of a...

Willow the Wonderer, a story about a child's innocent search for happiness, had been incubating in my head for well over two decades. I would think about it mostly when I was looking up at clouds, forms would appear in them and then disappear as the wind reformed the shapes. I wanted to create a picture book that would not only look good and engage children but would incorporate this idea. What was most important to me, however, was that the book plant a seed of wisdom in a small child's...