In my first newsletter, I shared a bit about my early years as a budding artist, an art major, a practicing architect and then, eventually, retirement. By 2015 when I saw a fellow river cruise passenger painting with a small box of watercolors on the sun deck of the Viking Heimdal one afternoon, I was sixty-two years old and ruminating about what's next. What creative energies have I got inside of me that I can coax out in the next 20-30 years? As I wrote last time, when I saw that fellow passenger painting, a voice inside said, "I can do that. I should be doing that." And most important, "I'm going to do that."

So I returned to my roots and pulled out my copy of Pencil Pictures by Theodore Kautzky, bought a fresh set of decent pencils and a case to keep them in and started drawing. Those early efforts were embarrassingly crude. I look back on them and marvel at how much difference time and practice make. But I went to work and made drawings. During a subsequent river cruise in 2017 from Budapest to Amsterdam, and then on to Paris, I took my pencils and my sketchbook. Two drawings I made during that trip helped fan that flickering flame of energy and inspiration.

While not the first sketch made on this trip, this view of Cologne, Germany from the top deck of another Viking ship had the right combination of technique, detail and energy and made me think I might it might be worth sticking with it. A few days later I made another sketch, looking out the window of a Paris hotel room while I waited for my spouse to get ready for dinner. Once again, something seemed to click.

Probably no more than a thirty minute effort, it was important to decide what to include and what to leave out. One curse that comes with being an architect is an obsession with detail. After all, God is in them, right? Like the moment I saw the unknown passenger sketching on the sun deck in 2015, I felt something shift. I have made hundreds of sketches and dozens of paintings since July of 2017. But it's clear to me that these were another turning point.

I suspect these drawings tapped into some long constrained energy, just looking for a way out of the cage that years of family and career quite naturally and necessarily construct for us. I am grateful that I now have the freedom, the time, and the resources to return to the creative pursuits that began so many years ago.