“My daughter took her bowl of pistachios or kaju katli, an Indian sweet made of cashews—and settled herself in the small nook between the oven, sink, and refrigerator. There she’d sit cross-legged on the floor, chatting about her school day with my mom. My dad cut fruit—apples, mangos, or guava, sprinkled with salt, pepper, and cumin—and we’d sit on the living room floor, chatting about my school assignments and progress. On some days, dinner would be ready and waiting for us on the kitchen table; on others, I’d join my parents in the kitchen and help finish the preparations. Each evening, without fail, we’d migrate to the small wooden table and eat dinner together—all three generations of us, each with our own set of disappointments and dreams. ”

“When I decided to have another child, I knew I’d have to approach myself differently. I couldn’t carry the resentment of not being enough—or the self-imposed pressure of keeping my career life cleanly separate from my life as a mother. I needed to redefine what my work meant to me, and I needed to redefine where creativity lived. Instead of seeing my work as a vessel for my creativity, I spent the year shaping my creativity into the vessel itself: I wanted it to live everywhere.”

“Revisiting old work is clarifying. It brings you closer to the person you were at that time—the person who felt pulled to capture a feeling, thought, or question through their art. It’s also a chance to notice how much you and your work have changed—a chance to acknowledge the creative obstacles you’ve puzzled through and the personal ones your artmaking pulled you through.”

“This practice of rewriting my personal color story is useful in a few ways. I am more intimately privy to the inner workings of my own mind, able to discern why an individual shade, or an entire spectrum of a single hue—affects me in the way it does. I am able to pair and detach certain colors with specific memories, and therefore, emotions. I also find myself largely immune to the effects of commercial color marketing. Rather than feeling agitated by the color red, for example, which is routinely found in conjunction with extreme feelings of stress and urgency (stop signs, red lights, sirens, and all combinations of warnings), I feel interested, almost eager. All three of these emotional states—agitation, interest, and eagerness—are based in excitement, but only agitation (which is the combination of excitement and anxiety), has a negative effect on my body and mind. ”

“I recognize that much of the frustration I feel these days comes from a lack of physically making. Caring for an infant (and toddler) leaves little space for much else, and on the days I do have a spare hour or two for myself, the minutes dissolve further into domesticity: a fresh dinner for my family or decluttering our living space. These are acts of love, and they are creative in their own right, but they don’t translate my emotions the way art-making does. Like my home, my mind needs decluttering, and for the sake of self-preservation, I decide to prioritize it.”

“When I began my latest project, a fully illustrated picture book, I decided to do things differently: I took the time to fill my well prior to making any art at all. I explored the essentials elements of the book I wanted to write inside a notebook: themes, environment, mood, and character arcs. I was also careful to outline why I wanted to write this book and what I hoped it would offer readers. Next, I filled a Pinterest board with inspiration – images of illustrations, paintings, movie stills, songs, and color swatches that reflected my target aesthetic. This not only filled my subconscious with visuals of what I’m drawn to and hope to reflect in my own work, but it gave me the opportunity to feel inspired and encouraged. Seeing imagery that stirs something within me, and knowing that another person, just like me, created it—is motivating. It encourages me to work hard to create images that evoke feeling in others.”

“When my mother first comes to visit me on the farm, she’s in awe. She’s lived in the suburbs for her entire adult life, ever since she emigrated to the United States as a young woman. For the last 30 years, she’s been surrounded by streets and sidewalks, the chatter of neighbors, the early morning rumble of school buses picking up their children. Here, it’s quiet.

“Look at all this land!” she says, walking around the 20 acres of wood that surrounds us. “Wow. It’s so green. So beautiful. Look! There’s deer there.” I look, but my eyes miss their delicate limbs as they disappear into the maple trees. Instead, I see the weeds inching past my knees, the stone driveway in need of leveling, the demolished kitchen I spend my days re-tiling. We wash our dishes in the bathtub. We spend our nights tilling the earth, weeding the greenhouse, or clearing years of debris from the yard. It’s difficult for me to imagine the future, but I know it will take many years to love this neglected land into something new.”

“When I think about a single moment, I consider all I don’t know: the other perspective, the years that led up to a particular interaction, the emotions that haven’t been expressed. The existence of everything I haven’t seen. When I write about a single moment, I think about all of the words left unsaid. This is where illustration arrives, lending its presence to the butter knife abandoned in the dish, the clothes heaped on the floor, the head cradled between two hands in front of an office window. Illustration is story-telling. It’s the pencil’s way of illuminating a path hidden in the shadows, hoping to eventually catch light. ”

“Cultivating empathy through regular introspection emboldens us to make work that is vulnerable—and therefore more honest, than it would’ve been otherwise. When you feel connected to yourself, it’s easier to shine a light on the parts of yourself that you’d normally keep hidden. Organically, your art becomes less of a mask that you crouch behind and more of a bridge that connects you to yourself. ”