In the tradition of Persepolis, In the Shadow of No Towers, and Our Cancer Year, an illustrated memoir of remarkable depth, power, and beauty
Danny Gregory and his wife, Patti, hadn’t been married long. Their baby, Jack, was ten months old; life was pretty swell. And then Patti fell under a subway train and was paralyzed from the waist down.
In a world where nothing seemed to have much meaning, Danny decided to teach himself to draw, and what he learned stunned him. Suddenly things had color again, and value. The result is Everyday Matters, his journal of discovery, recovery, and daily life in New York City. It is as funny, insightful, and surprising as life itself.
""Gregory's lively sketches and witty meditations on big-city life are anything but mundane." -- [Score: A-] Entertainment Weekly
"At times heartbreaking, but more often uplifting . . . a must for anyone searching to reconnect with a lost inner artist." -- Creative Loafing
About the Author
Danny Gregory is the author of The Creative License, Hello World, and Change Your Underwear Twice a Week. His web site, DannyGregory.com, receives thousands of visitors each day. A contributing illustrator to The Morning News web site, he lives in Greenwich Village, New York, with his wife and son.
I spent most of my life not believing I had the right to consider myself an artist in any way. But then I started drawing about eight years ago and it changed my life. It led me to travel, to meet people, to get books published, but most of all it transformed the way I see the world around me and how I experience every day.
I believe that everyone has the same opportunity. Not to become a Professional Artist but to make art into a regular part of your everyday life. It doesn't matter what your elementary school art teacher said, or your parents, or your boss. You have it in you to draw, to play an instrument, to write poetry, whatever you choose. You can and should express your self. Regardless of what you fear anyone else may thinks of the results, you can become a creative person and achieve a new view of the life you lead.
I often wonder what the world would be like if every adult was as creative and free as we all were as kids. I think it would be calmer, lovelier, more peaceful place. And I'd like to do something about it.
Three years ago, I started writing about my experience of creativity and sharing it on my website, dannygregory.com. Within a few months, the Everyday Matters group was formed and now over a thousand people get together regularly to encourage each other in drawing and painting and making beautiful things. They chat on the Internet and they get together in cities and towns around the world to collaborate and share.
My new book, The Creative License, was written to help the sorts of people I met in our group. Some are students, some were artists and designers. But most were just people like me who had suddenly decided, when they were well into adulthood, that they wanted to return to making creativity a regular part of their lives. Most of them don't want to make a living painting or have their drawings hung in galleries and museums. They just want to have the pleasure and satisfaction of creating things.
If you would like to incorporate more creativity into your life, check out my new book, visit my site and drop me a line. I'd love to be inspired by you.
Meanwhile, here's some more of my story:
I was born in London, which we left when I was three or four. We moved briefly to Pittsburgh, Pa. then to Canberra, Australia. When I was nine, I went to live with my grandparents in Lahore, Pakistan. Next we went to a kibbutz in Israel then moved to a small town called Kfar Saba. As the Yom Kippur War broke out, we relocated to Brooklyn where I went to a Quaker high school. I was editor of the school paper and organized a Marxist study circle. I graduated from Princeton University, summa cum laude, with a degree in Politics. It was my 21st school.
When I was eleven, I began my first job - assisting the vet at the local slaughterhouse. I've worked in a record store, in one of New York's finest restaurants, and my congressman's office. I was a White House intern (Jimmy Carter lusted for me only in his heart) and a McDonalds' fry cook. I have also worked in a half dozen advertising agencies, and illustrated books, newspapers, and magazines. I am currently Executive Creative Director of a NY ad agency and Contributing Illustrator to The Morning News.
I live in Greenwich Village with my lovely wife, Patti Lynn, my son, Jack Tea, and our miniature longhaired dachshund, Joe. If you are in the area, come draw with me and my group.
I loved this book. I collect books on how to keep an art journal and this is the first one that unleashed my drawing and writing about everyday life. The other books are so polished and beautiful it made me feel like my drawings and writing weren't quite good enough. I love how he includes partial drawings because my sketchbook is full of partial drawings, they caught a glimpse of something so they are worthy of keeping. I also love how his writing can be a simple or funny thought that occurred to him during a drawing, rather than always something deep and profound. A beautiful book that will go on my very special favorites shelf to be read again and again.
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If you want to be inspired to draw, or to write, or to live more fully, or best of all to do all three simultaneously, (and if you only have 60 minutes to move closer to your goals)- Everyday Matters is a must read. It's real, charming, witty, whimsical, and teaches art and life lessons that can be applied BY ANYONE. For all those who say "but I can't draw" and even more for those who say "but what shall I draw" this has some answers to the first question and many to the second. It's hard for me to say whether Danny is a better artist, writer, or philosopher. Fortunately we get all three in this slim volume. I can't wait for his next book.
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Everyday Matters is such a special, intimate, lovely book, it's hard to know where to begin singing its praises. To open the book is to steal a look inside the sketchbook (a.k.a. the heart and mind) of a man who has just realized that drawing might help him see everything more clearly -- including seeing his way into a whole new life, one in which his wife is in a wheelchair. And that man happens to live in and draw pictures of New York City, which he adores.
Besides the delights of Gregory's words and images -- which are sometimes funny, and other times poignant -- the book also serves as a nearly overwhelming incentive to pick up a pen and draw. And by drawing, to see objects again for the first time. If by publishing the book Gregory wished to remind people to look at the world around them with fresh, hungry, sensitive hearts and eyes, he has succeeded with this reader.
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