God clearly has a sense of humor. While much of America spent this week battling hurricane-force snow, record lows, and the kind of ice that makes your driveway look like an Olympic luge track, I’m watching the sun rise over the Atlantic. Pink clouds. Mild waves. A forecast promising near 70 by afternoon. I’m in Hilton Head, SC, and hosting my Winter Art Escape artist retreat, reconnecting and painting with old friends and new, each of whom had stories of missed flights, white-knuckle drives, and the kind of slipping and sliding that makes you question all your life choices. Meanwhile, I’m sipping coffee in paradise, wondering how I got so lucky. Except I know exactly how I got here, and “lucky” had little to do with it. Blessed would be a better term. The Pinball Theory of Life When I was a kid, there were these magnificent contraptions called pinball machines. You’d stand there gripping two paddles, fire a silver ball upward into a maze of lights and bumpers, and pray it didn’t ricochet straight into oblivion. The goal was simple: Land that ball in the high-value hole. The reality was chaos. No matter how skilled you were, random bumpers

How can something so beautiful be so dangerous? One of my favorite things to photograph is a thick coat of ice drawing down from a tree branch — nature’s chandelier, delicate and crystalline. But of course, when branches sag and break and fall on power lines, everything gets complicated.  Finding Beauty Everywhere As many as 40 states are dealing with this weekend’s massive storm. The ability to find beauty in tragedy is a gift. We can’t always control our circumstances, but we can at least control our response to them.  Pay Attention Now The grocery store shelves are bare. It’s alarming to see people who weren’t paying attention to the storm warnings scramble at the last minute to find almost nothing left. It pays to pay attention. Perspective Changes Everything It makes me appreciate the life I have — the simplicity of life when groceries are there when we need them, when the heat in the house works and the electricity works. It reminds me that compared to people in war zones or famine zones, this little three-day outage doesn’t give us much to whine about. Others deal with this every day. Change Is Possible Not everyone in the world

Something is amiss. Summer weather filled our holiday season, and we’re still getting amazing sunny days when we should be shivering. The birds are singing like spring. The dead trees are about to sprout spring greens. Nature is confused here in Austin, Texas, this year. The house has a different sound now. I noticed it first this morning when I meandered into the kitchen in my bare feet — the floorboards creak louder when there’s one less person moving around upstairs. The coffeemaker’s gurgle echoes off the kitchen walls. Even the dogs’ collars jingle differently, as if the sound waves have more room to travel before finding a surface to absorb them. The Last Sunday Dinner A week ago today, we gathered for what would be our last Sunday dinner as a complete family for the foreseeable future. Yesterday, Berkeley, our youngest triplet, drove away with a U-Haul to start his dream job at a space company five hours away. As I said grace over our meal, my voice cracked. The words caught in my throat like breadcrumbs. The reality of our last Sunday dinner, after 23 years of them, was, well, pretty hard to take. You see, I know

The crackle of burning embers fills the living room — that primal sound that’s comforted humans since we first tamed fire. Wood smoke mingles with the lingering scent of pine needles from the Christmas tree and leftover scented Christmas candles. Outside and across the backyard at my art studio, the porch by the outdoor fireplace has become our gathering place for holiday moments, including that magical night when old painting friends reunited — brushes in one hand, Christmas cookies in the other, a model to pose,15 years of weekly painting nights warming us as much as the flames. The Box in the Garage This weekend we’ll be boxing decorations, each ornament wrapped and boxes labeled, stored on sagging garage shelves until next year’s resurrection. Time to remove the wreaths, the four-foot toy soldier, and the Christmas lights. It’s the ritual of transition — the careful packing away of one season to make room for whatever comes next. And we are entering a new season. But there’s another project that’s been haunting me that finally got attention this week. Thousands of photos finally made it from old hard drives to my phone/cloud. Still waiting: more years, more boxes, slides from the

I’m watching the sunrise paint the limestone cliffs behind our home in shades of rose gold and amber — colors that would make any plein air painter reach for their brushes. Steam rises from my coffee cup, creating little ghost dancers in the morning light, and somewhere in the distance, a mourning dove is singing what sounds suspiciously like the first notes of “Silent Night.” Eighty-one degrees on Christmas Day. That’s what the weatherman promises us here in Austin. While half the country dreams of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, of frost etching the panes of cathedral windows, of that particular blue-silver light that only comes with fresh snow, we Texans will be hiking in shorts, maybe taking the kayaks out on the lake, listening to cardinals and mockingbirds provide the soundtrack to our holiday. Memory’s Muffled Music I close my eyes and I can still hear it, though — that specific muffled quiet that falls when snow begins to stick. Growing up in that smallish Midwestern town, Christmas morning had a sound all its own. The scrape of a neighbor’s shovel on concrete at dawn. The whoosh and thud of snow sliding off the roof. The delighted shriek of a

The fireplace in the living room crackles like small bones breaking, and the smell of burning cedar mingles with the steam rising from my mug of hot tea. Outside, the frigid cold arrived this past week to remind us winter is here — sudden, decisive, unapologetic. I’m bundled in blankets and fuzzy sweat pants. My tea tastes particularly bitter this morning. Or maybe that’s just the aftertaste of an email I received last week. I know I shouldn’t let people get to me, but some things sting like winter wind through a cracked window. The Surgical Strike Sometimes life delivers pain when you least expect it. Earlier this week, between meetings and YouTube shows, an email struck with surgical precision: “Eric, your ego is out of control.” I could have deleted it. Should have, maybe. Instead, I took the bait: “Thanks for the feedback, it usually is, but is there something specific you want to point out?” To his credit, he didn’t retreat. “You talk about yourself too much. You talk about how many houses you have too much, about all the portraits you have of yourself. You need to let the artists on your show shine and stop interrupting

The fireplace in the living room crackles like small bones breaking, and the smell of burning cedar mingles with the steam rising from my mug of hot tea. Outside, the frigid cold arrived this past week to remind us winter is here — sudden, decisive, unapologetic. I’m bundled in blankets and fuzzy sweat pants. My tea tastes particularly bitter this morning. Or maybe that’s just the aftertaste of an email I received last week. I know I shouldn’t let people get to me, but some things sting like winter wind through a cracked window. The Surgical Strike Sometimes life delivers pain when you least expect it. Earlier this week, between meetings and YouTube shows, an email struck with surgical precision: “Eric, your ego is out of control.” I could have deleted it. Should have, maybe. Instead, I took the bait: “Thanks for the feedback, it usually is, but is there something specific you want to point out?” To his credit, he didn’t retreat. “You talk about yourself too much. You talk about how many houses you have too much, about all the portraits you have of yourself. You need to let the artists on your show shine and stop interrupting

The angry sound of a trillion BBs is hitting the old metal roof of this Texas ranch house as a thunderburst opens up overhead, dumping a tsunami of water so vast it will flood all the nearby rivers in minutes. Here, the Texas Hill Country stretches in gentle waves of limestone and cedar, vineyards catching early light like strings of jewels draped across the landscape. A hawk circles overhead, its cry echoing off the hills as it navigates thunderheads the size of skyscrapers. Last weekend’s drive through these rolling hills still lingers — the old farmhouses weathered by decades of sun, the way light plays across the land at golden hour. It’s not Tuscany, but maybe that’s exactly the point. Italy’s Siren Song Three weeks since returning, and Italy still inhabits my bloodstream like a fever I can’t break. Florence calls with the voice of every Renaissance master who ever mixed pigment on a worn wooden palette — and I can’t get it out of my head. My right brain — the creative me, the dreamer, the one who loses hours drowning in a single Caravaggio — refuses to let go. I can still smell the turpentine of ancient studios,

Church bells are ringing from every corner of this ancient city as the sun comes up over the distant purple mountains. Glancing out the window of my apartment, other than modern appliances and plumbing (thank goodness for the plumbing — have you read about Renaissance sanitation?), it’s easy to feel like I could be living at a time when these same bells inspired people to create some of the finest artwork ever known to man. The funny thing? Back then, they didn’t call it the Renaissance. That term was invented 200 years later by a French historian who looked back and said, “Wow, something amazing happened there.” Which makes you wonder: What are we calling our current moment? The Age of Anxiety? The Era of Endless Scrolling? The Age of AI?  Medici Money Here’s what actually sparked the Renaissance, and it’s not what your high school art teacher told you. Sure, there was a “rebirth” of classical learning after monks spent centuries copying Greek and Roman texts by candlelight. But you know what really made it happen? Money. Lots of it. The Medici family — basically the venture capitalists of the 1400s — decided that commissioning art was better than

  Deep blue waters stretch endlessly before me, framed by snow-capped Alps that pierce the October sky. From my window at Hotel Barchetta on Lake Como, I watch the morning light dance across waters that have inspired artists for centuries. Fall has painted the mountainsides in muted browns, oranges, and reds, while ornamental estates dot the shoreline like elaborate birthday cakes. The busy summer lake season has quieted now. An occasional classic wooden speedboat cuts through the mirror-like surface, and a few tour boats ferry the last visitors of the season to distant shores. Churchill, who painted these very waters, called Como “the most beautiful lake in the world.” Even Mark Twain, initially partial to Lake Tahoe, eventually confessed that Como deserved “the eternal comparison.” This week, I’m painting both Como and Lake Garda as I lead a group of people through Switzerland and Italy on my annual international painting trip. Last May, at the Plein Air Convention, it was Tahoe. Three of the world’s most stunning lakes have graced my canvases this year, and somehow, instead of exhaustion, I feel invigorated — not just by the beauty, but by the stories unfolding around me. Voice at Dawn Over breakfast,

I’ve awakened inside a postcard. Outside my window at Hotel Seeburg, Lake Lucerne spreads like molten silver beneath peaks that dwarf anything I’ve painted in Colorado or the Adirondacks. These are the Swiss Alps in their full glory — cathedrals of stone and snow that make you believe in something larger than yourself. The sun creeps behind the Pilatus massif, setting the mountain face ablaze with copper and gold. Light dances across the lake in brushstrokes I could spend a lifetime trying to capture. My easel calls from the corner, but breakfast waits, and soon we’ll board the coach to Engelberg, where my painting adventure begins in earnest. This is day two of leading artists through Switzerland — some old friends, others destined to become so. Last night’s welcome dinner was brief; jet lag is the great equalizer. But today, ah today, we paint our first alpine village. I’m seriously considering those lederhosen hanging in the closet. In Switzerland, audacity feels not just acceptable, but required. The Girl in the Clock Shop Decades ago, I stood in this same magical landscape as a 19-year-old boy, trembling not from the mountain air but from my own inadequacies. My parents had gifted

 Is it my imagination, or is there a hint of apple cider floating in this crisp fall air?Yesterday’s drive from Chicago to Door County, Wisconsin, transported me back to a childhood paradise. The harvested cornfields, roadside pumpkin stands, and orchards heavy with autumn fruit stirred something deep within me. Fall has always been my favorite season, and Wisconsin — with its sprawling farms — feels like the landscape of my childhood, where every breath carried the promise of possibility.But here’s what struck me most: That apple cider scent didn’t just smell good. It triggered a flood of memories, taking me instantly back to childhood orchard visits, sticky fingers wrapped around warm cider cups, and the safety of family traditions.Mental Time TravelWe all carry these invisible triggers. The taste of black grapes transports me to my grandmother’s garden arbor. The opening notes of “Have You Seen Her” by the Chi-Lites still choke me up, instantly returning me to that intersection as 17-year-old me drove my dad’s ’67 GTO, tears streaming, after my girlfriend Corky broke my heart.These flashbacks can be beautiful gifts — or invisible prisons.For decades, I let one devastating moment define my choices. Getting fired from the company I founded

 Is it my imagination, or is there a hint of apple cider floating in this crisp fall air?Yesterday’s drive from Chicago to Door County, Wisconsin, transported me back to a childhood paradise. The harvested cornfields, roadside pumpkin stands, and orchards heavy with autumn fruit stirred something deep within me. Fall has always been my favorite season, and Wisconsin — with its sprawling farms — feels like the landscape of my childhood, where every breath carried the promise of possibility.But here’s what struck me most: That apple cider scent didn’t just smell good. It triggered a flood of memories, taking me instantly back to childhood orchard visits, sticky fingers wrapped around warm cider cups, and the safety of family traditions.Mental Time TravelWe all carry these invisible triggers. The taste of black grapes transports me to my grandmother’s garden arbor. The opening notes of “Have You Seen Her” by the Chi-Lites still choke me up, instantly returning me to that intersection as 17-year-old me drove my dad’s ’67 GTO, tears streaming, after my girlfriend Corky broke my heart.These flashbacks can be beautiful gifts — or invisible prisons.For decades, I let one devastating moment define my choices. Getting fired from the company I founded

The morning light catches the lake, gleaming like liquid gold. Summer’s last breath warms the air while autumn whispers through the maples, their leaves just beginning to blush orange and crimson. Here in the Adirondacks, the baby loons have shed their fuzzy innocence, transforming into sleek young adults testing their wings. Soon their parents will abandon them to fly south, leaving the youngsters to master independence through trial and solitude. It’s nature’s way of saying: You’re ready, even if you don’t feel it. In a few hours, I’ll reluctantly pack my car and drive north to Burlington, then fly back to the demands of boardrooms and studios. My extended summer here — interrupted by that magical month in China — feels like it ended before it truly began. The fiberoptic cable running along the lake bottom has been my lifeline, letting me broadcast from this sanctuary instead of rushing back and spending time on airplanes. Technology gave me the gift of not having to choose between work and wonder. But reality calls. Board meetings await in Austin, followed by the next chapter of what I’m calling my “world art tour.” I’m excited about what’s ahead, yet leaving this place always