I don’t remember a time I didn’t want to be an artist. As a kid I was constantly drawing. It was part of my identity, and I never really considered doing anything else for a living.
Of course, later, when you decide to seriously pursue art as a career, you realize other people also do art and are very talented. The creative business is highly competitive and demanding. Making this point, my graphic design hero, the late Milton Glaser, authored an excellent book called Art Is Work.
To do any art for a living takes focus, commitment, and obsession. I mean obsession in a good way, but obsession nonetheless. You can’t fake it or do the minimum in the art business. This goes for all creative fields at a professional level. As it’s been said many times: “If it were easy, everybody would be doing it.” It also means being ready when opportunity knocks. To me, creativity has always been a beloved obsession, a gift, an adventure, and a way of life—the only life I have ever known.
My dad initially sparked my interest when he would draw cartoons and entertain my sister and me with his stylized sketches. Though he never worked as an artist, his doodles, amusing little drawings, and imagination had a big impact on me. I learned early that art was an outlet and that it was fun.
To my young mind, art was a way to communicate—getting what’s in your head onto paper. My childhood drawings often involved people, pop culture, history, or animals, but rarely scenery. There was always a storytelling aspect, and there were no hard-and-fast rules. Although I’ve always been somewhat quiet and shy, I could retreat into creativity and gain confidence. That has been a constant on my journey.
I also realized early that if people liked what you drew, you could be rewarded for doing something you enjoyed. Kellogg’s cereal company in Canada had a national “Draw the Package” contest, so I drew Tony the Tiger and won an electric racing car set. A Manitoba gas company held a coloring book contest, and I won a stylish metallic green bicycle with chrome fenders and whitewall tires on the set of an Old Dutch Foods television show.
At age 5 I entered the big Shrine Circus poster contest, which annually featured a TV Western star personality as the special guest. That year The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, starring Hugh O’Brian, was a popular television series. I dreamed up a scene of Earp on horseback being chased by Comanche warriors. It won the city primary division, and I found myself having dinner in a classy uptown restaurant with O’Brian and three other division winners.
That afternoon we appeared on stage at Winnipeg’s landmark Hudson’s Bay department store in front of a big crowd. Wyatt Earp presented me with a complete marshal outfit: black flat-brimmed cowboy hat, black jacket, gray pinstripe pants, and holstered, white-handled six-shooters (the cap variety). The next day the Winnipeg Tribune featured a photo of a tall, smiling O’Brian standing behind me, his hands on my shoulders, as I struggled not to drop the big, red-ribboned box containing the cowboy clothes.
I tell those childhood stories to show how integral art has been in my life. As a shy kid, it was a ticket to identity, and I was always drawing. Hours would pass, but I’d hardly notice. It was so enjoyable, and to everyone else, that’s who I was—the kid who draws.
Putting the observations, feelings, and stories that passed through my mind onto paper or film wasn’t a casual choice—it just had to be done. This has remained a need in my adult life.
Fortunately, I have been able to make my living, covering decades, entirely from creative art: graphic design, illustration, photography, conceptual design, art direction, idea generation, magazine design, visual identities, teaching at the university level, and writing. Primarily, as an art director and creative director in advertising and publishing, I’ve been blessed to work in the creative realm. It’s all based on sketching and drawing: getting thoughts out of your head and onto paper, telling stories, communicating ideas—those treasured right-brain functions. In recent years that all was soon hanging by a literal thread in the balance—not to mention life itself.
A Dull, Pulverizing Sensation
Not too long ago (it seems like yesterday yet still surreal) I felt a sickening thud as my head smashed full force against rock-solid ice in a freak public skating accident. Blood dripped everywhere, yet I didn’t pass out. I skated off the ice, got towels and ice cubes from the alarmed rink workers, and headed for the bathroom to stop the bleeding. But I had been taking a blood thinner and couldn’t stop the profuse flow. When I peered into the mirror, it looked like someone had shot me in the face. Horrified, the rink attendant called an ambulance.
He didn’t know at the time that his decision to call 9-1-1 and the paramedics’ quick diagnosis to alert neurosurgeons would save my life. What had been a two-week Western summer vacation trip had taken a dark turn.
Preoccupied with stopping the external bleeding, I didn’t realize a massive blood clot was quickly forming inside my brain. Thinned blood was flowing into the organ at such a pressured rate that it was pushing my brain off-center.
As I paced around the arena bathroom in my bloodstained skates, my mind was locked in a compressed freeze-frame mode when the paramedics arrived. Alerted to the blood thinner, they feared the worst and insisted I go with them immediately.
Within minutes I was in an ambulance en route to Boise’s St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center. Everything was happening so fast. Strapped to a gurney, I was rolled through the emergency room doors, where neurosurgeons were ready for action.
Images flashed through my mind: large drops of blood splashing on crisp white ice—usually a treasured surface, now cruel as solid concrete. A dull, pulverizing sensation echoed through my head, unlike anything I had ever felt. It was strangely quiet, except for the murmuring of voices and the gurney’s wheels on the tiled floor. Reality was sinking in.
After a brain scan, a few words pierced the silence: “You have a large blood clot on your brain. It’s life-threatening. We have to operate right now.” I couldn’t see the lead neurosurgeon’s face, but his tone left no doubt. I was on the edge and could die in the operating room. He paused, allowing me a quick silent prayer. Then everything faded into two hours of intricate neurosurgery.
Dr. Thomas Manning, who’d saved lives in chaotic Afghan war zones, was calm and ready. I’m so thankful he was on call that afternoon.
When death comes knocking, things happen unbelievably fast. Time freezes and speeds like a countdown clock simultaneously. You’re a captive audience to your own fate.
Reality Snaps into Focus
Facing death felt like being at an airport as a trip ends. You want to stay longer, but the plane is soon to leave. Is that all there is? You wish certain decisions in life had been different, but there’s no time left. Am I right with God? I had less than 40 seconds to pray silently before the neurosurgeon resumed. Then the lights went out.
What does one say to their Creator in 40 seconds? Many people debate salvation in terms of faith and works, but what do you do when the time actually comes? Self-righteous posturing fades in the face of stark reality. I could not save myself that afternoon in the emergency room, and I cannot save myself for future existence when this journey ends. Life is a gift.
Ephesians 2:8, 9 tells us, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (NIV).
Sometimes, when I hear someone heralding salvation by their merits, I want to ask, “How have you done today? Are you perfect yet?”
The gifts of life, grace, the cross, and the resurrection are not a checklist to earn salvation. We follow Christ in gratitude for the gift of grace. That’s where peace of mind and assurance lie.
Recovery and Rediscovery
As if awakening from a strange dream, I remember the neurosurgeon saying, “I got the clot.” His words trailed off as I found myself in the intensive-care ward, complete with tubes and monitoring. Critical but stable, I faced five months of recovery, including 72 rehab sessions and a half dozen therapists and doctors.
The immediate visual impact was unsettling, but being alive brought acute awareness, gratitude, and value to living in the moment. My head was shaved on the right side, where surgeons had removed and replaced part of my skull to access the clot. A horseshoe-shaped incision and staples accentuated the scene. On the left side my shoulder-length hair remained untouched, a testimony to the ER team’s urgency.
The kindness, financial support, and encouragement of family, friends, students, and former teammates played a huge role in my recovery. A close friend brought a sketch pad to the hospital, and another brought a magazine featuring bluesman B. B. King on the cover, inspiring me to sketch. Propped up in the hospital bed, I tried drawing, but couldn’t. Troubled, I set the sketchbook aside.
Therapists kept me busy with tests and tasks, revealing that I couldn’t subtract numbers, had trouble walking, and struggled with balance. My sight reflexes were a third of normal. Vocal seizures garbled my words into slow, distorted sounds.
“From playing years of hockey, I know how to train,” I told my therapist. “Tell me what I need to do.” She encouraged me by telling me that brain neuropathy could be retrained and new pathways formed. I was determined to recover. Yet the failed B. B. King drawing lingered in my mind. What if I couldn’t draw again? It was all I’d ever done. I set the sketchbook aside for weeks.
Eventually I confronted the fear. Alone at a picnic table with a sketchbook and the B. B. King magazine, I prayed. I had never been more nervous about drawing. Slowly King began to emerge on the page. It was working! The ability was still there, though it took more focus. A tremendous sense of relief swept over me.
Consistent drawing became vital to rehab, along with sessions of puzzles, speech tests, and life skills. On the hospital’s top floor a reconstructed street helped us relearn such tasks as navigating curbs, counting money, etc. Gradually I improved. With the correct medication adjustments, the seizures stopped. I was grateful to God for life and paced myself, rediscovering joy in the moment. Coming right to the edge puts things in perspective.
I also worried about losing the ability to play the guitar. Borrowing one, I found the same struggle as with drawing, but eventually regained confidence. Recovering a song I had written, recorded, and played consistently for years took intense focus and almost an hour. Determined, I wrote down lyrics and chords to every song I could remember, not quitting until they were recovered.
Creativity as Healing
God’s gifts of grace and creativity became a lifeline. Alyssa Bonagura, a musician friend, told me, “Creativity is God’s gift of healing. If I don’t feel well or am down, I still ‘show up,’ and I always feel better.” Those words stayed with me.
Later I was invited to speak on graphic design and faith at the Inspire conference in California. Nervous but prepared with visual aids, I included her quote: “Creativity is God’s gift of healing.” The presentation went well, and it was invigorating to be among Christian creatives.
Today I hold on to that mantra. Creativity is a priceless gift, not just for career artists but as a balancing factor in anyone’s life. In a pressure-packed, highly technical world, the arts play a vital role in health and healing. Milton Glaser said, “If you like Mozart and I like Mozart, we have something in common. If we have something in common, we’re less likely to kill one another.”* Yet when budget concerns hit educational facilities, for example, too often the budgets of music and art programs are the first to be cut.
Compelling research on how the arts are essential in daily life has shown their cutting-edge therapeutic benefits, such as reducing stress and extending lifespans, regardless of skill level.
Creativity takes many forms—visual, audio, written word—and appreciating those expressions is essential. For this traveler, I treasure two words in particular: grace and creativity. Both are priceless for healing.