Drawing Your Own Path: 33 Practices at the Crossroads of Art and Meditation

"Drawing Your Own Path is a smart, subtle, sophisticated, compassionate, radically eye-opening and mind-altering guide to creative and artistic liberation. Thank you, John Simon!"—Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

"John F. Simon, Jr., widely recognized as an early pioneer in the use of computer-generated imagery in contemporary art, has turned his attention to the act mark-making as a doorway into self-awareness and the essential touchstone of visual creativity. He leads us through a sequence of meditative drawing exercises, and shares insightful, touching anecdotes of his many years of experience as a practicing artist."—Peter Halley, Artist

"The mysteries of the mind and universe are coupled with a very practical guide to drawing. It is an unlikely but wonderfully fruitful combination, a step-by-step approach to awareness and art."—Lawrence Rinder, Director, UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive

"John’s marvelous artwork emerges from a deeply inspired and intuitive unfolding. His gift of finding one’s own creative process is beautifully transmitted in this delightful guide."—Jon Bernie, Ordinary Freedom

"Drawing Your Own Path is an invitation to those who have never drawn before and a warm, informative, intelligent and lovely book to read. It offers refreshing, new ways to look at and experience the steps to make drawings today."—Sharon Louden, Artist, Editor of Living and Sustaining a Creative Life 

Drawing Your Own Path is an account of how multi–media artist John Simon’s daily drawing discipline became a meditation practice, and how that meditation illuminated his creative source. A practical guidebook full of Simon's own art, Drawing Your Own Path offers meditators an alternative path to ‘just sitting’ and offers artists a way to mindfully examine and deepen the source of their creative ideas. Readers are guided through thirty–three meditation and drawing exercises, exploring concentrated looking, mindful sketching, and improvisational awareness, all designed to help practitioners discover the vast creativity within themselves and in their daily lives.

John F. Simon, Jr. is one of the pioneers in the development of Software Art. His seminal work "Every Icon" was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial. In October 2005 the Whitney Museum of American Art and Printed Matter published Simon’s artist’s book and software CD, Mobility Agents, and in 2011, Simon collaborated with Icelandic singer Björk to write an app for her album, Biophilia, the first app album ever created.

Simon’s artworks can be found in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Collezione Maramotti, The Brooklyn Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Simon currently lives and works in Sugar Loaf, New York.