Hands Series 2025
I am my hands. Everything I do and have done came through my hands. My hands have been amazing and tell countless stories. So when my friend Mark told me about his Ontological coaching and how six words and their emotions account for most everything we people do — it challenged me to express these […]
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The Hand That Started Everything — Santa Barbara, 1981
I was twenty-four years old and I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I knew I could draw. I knew I loved the feel of a burin moving across a copper plate — the resistance, the precision, the permanent mark of it. And I knew that on Sunday mornings I could […]
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Nobody Told Me the Deck Was Stacked Against Me
I contracted polio at the age of one in Jerusalem so as a result, I have always moved on arm power alone — with crutches and braces, a hand-cycle or wheelchair, through pools, up mountain trails in Nepal, through a marathon course in Hawaii and across the finish line of an IronMan in Korea. Three […]
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Cathy’s Fancy: My First Artist in Residence
As a boy I liked to swim in the sea and sketch things I saw as I traveled the world with my family. As a teenager I was so excited when I saw an advertisement for an over-water villa in Bora Bora, Tahiti. The concept of a lifestyle living and painting in idyllic spots peppered […]
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Lady Gaga on Crutches
In her multi-faceted performances, a collage of opera, rock concert, spin class, fashion and photo shoot, Lady Gaga pushes boundaries and forces audiences to think differently. She is also famously active and supportive of marginalized groups such as the LGBTQ community. In her recent appearances at Coachella Festival, California and Copacabana Beach, Brazil, while singing, […]
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African Arts at the Cantor, Stanford University
Juxtaposed with the emotive and powerful Rodin sculptures in the adjacent room, a collection of African arts stops me in my tracks and bludgeons my preconceptions about the creative output and content of this overlooked continent. I’m dumbfounded by the modern dynamism and universal messaging of what is a “Global Africa” which “has been connected […]
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Meditating in Bali
If you are reading this, I have survived a 7-day silent meditation retreat on the flanks of a volcano on the island of Bali. Though I’ve been meditating poorly for 50 years, I never seem to improve — if improving in meditation is some kind of competition with myself. But I continue because I know […]
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Scooters, Streets, and Saigon’s Surge of Optimism
Just wrapped up an unforgettable voyage as a Conversationalist aboard Seabourn, sailing from Singapore to Saigon. Once again, I found myself immersed in transitioning cultures, meeting new friends, and witnessing the pulse of places like Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam, with its 100 million citizens — 70 million of whom are under 44 — feels […]
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From Sketchpad to iPad
I’m a purist and a contemporary fine artist. I paint with big brushes and oil paints on large canvases and exhibit them globally. So when visiting the Apple Store just to get new batteries for our iPhones, and my wife excitedly showed me an iPad and asked me to check out the drawing and painting […]
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