Richard Sullivan

“Life on Shuffle”
18”x24” Acrylic on board.

This painting makes me so happy! One of my faves so far. I painted this for Josh Cooper and his Life on Shuffle ! Thank you so much for the trust and faith!

Portal of Joy 🌈

I’m so excited to share my newest mural, Portal of Joy, commissioned by Louisville Visual Art and will be installed outside their building in the Portland neighborhood! Thank you so much to Angela Stallings Hagan for her vision and support!

This painting sat unfinished in my studio for two months because I was afraid. Afraid it wouldn’t make sense. Afraid it wouldn’t be understood. Eventually I realized the painting wasn’t asking me to explain it—it was asking me to trust it.

Every day became one small step into the unknown. That’s what this new body of work is teaching me: creative confidence isn’t the absence of fear—it’s creating anyway.

I hope you don’t just look at this painting.
I hope you feel it. 💛

This week changed me.

On Monday, I facilitated Doodle Bop with a group of 5–10-year-olds for a Portland summer camp. I walked in confident the approach I had used with high school students would work the same way.

It didn’t.

For some of the younger kids, sharing their artwork felt vulnerable. One child ripped up his drawing because he didn’t want anyone to change it. I left feeling exposed, wondering if I had failed.

As I reflected, I realized something important: Doodle Bop isn’t about getting everyone to collaborate. It’s about creating a space where people feel safe enough to participate however they’re ready. If making one mark is enough today, then that’s enough. My job isn’t to push people into the experience—it’s to invite them into it.

The very next day, Doodle Bop came to InstructureCon, where hundreds of educators experienced it throughout the evening. What surprised me most wasn’t the artwork—it was what happened between people. Strangers laughed, shared stories, and slowly relaxed into their own creativity.

When I returned to the summer camp on Wednesday, I let go of my expectations and simply invited the kids to participate instead of making sharing a rule. Everything changed. The room felt lighter—for them and for me.

This week reminded me that creativity doesn’t flourish because we have the perfect activity. It flourishes when people feel safe enough to explore, connect, and simply begin.

Doodle Bop continues to teach me just as much as I’m teaching others, and for that I’m incredibly grateful.

I have a feeling this is only the beginning.

I am so excited to see these shirts in person! They turned out so beautifully, and I’m incredibly honored to have collaborated with Instructure to bring this illustration to life. Thank you so much to Louisville Visual Art for the opportunity to teach and give back to my community!!

Tonight, I’ll be sharing the Doodle Bop collaborative art experience at the InstructureCon Opening Reception, and I couldn’t be more excited. Over the past year, it’s been inspiring to watch students and adults lower their guard, take creative risks, and discover the joy of making art together.

Doodle Bop is all about creating a safe container where play, exploration, and collaboration can grow naturally. I can’t wait to create with everyone tonight. See you there! 🎨✨

So… what is Doodle Bop?

People ask me this all the time.

Is it an art class?
A workshop?
A drawing game?
A collaborative art project?

The answer is… yes.
But it’s also something deeper.

Doodle Bop is an oasis for creativity.

A place where we can step outside of performance, perfection, and pressure.

Where there isn’t a “right” way to draw.
No expectation to impress.
No audience to perform for.

Only permission to explore.

I’ve come to believe that creativity isn’t something we force.

It’s something we allow.

Beneath perfectionism, fear, judgment, and expectation flows a creative current that’s already there. When we feel safe enough, it begins to move again.

That’s what these workshops have taught me.

People don’t become creative because I teach them how to draw.

They become creative because they remember they already are.

That’s Doodle Bop.

An invitation to slow down.
To reconnect.
To play.
To make one honest mark.

And then another.

“Creativity grows where we feel safe enough to play.” 💙

This week I sent the first Doodle Bop exhibition posters to the printer.

This first one is called “My Journey.”

For much of my life, I measured my worth through performance.

If I worked hard enough…
If I became successful enough…
If I earned enough approval…

Maybe then I would finally feel worthy.

It took me a long time to realize that what I had been searching for wasn’t achievement.

It was safety.

Safety to create honestly.
Safety to trust my own voice.
Safety to explore without judgment.

Over the last few years, my studio became that place. One painting at a time, years of pressure and perfectionism slowly began to thaw. Beneath it all was a creative current that had been waiting patiently all along—like a river beneath winter ice.

Doodle Bop wasn’t something I invented.

It was something I uncovered.

This poster is the first chapter of that story, and the first of five posters I’ll be sharing from this new body of work.

“The child never stopped creating. He simply was waiting for me to come back home.” 💙

I’m so excited to be sharing Doodle Bop with educators from around the world at this year’s InstructureCon here in Louisville.

Next week I’ll be leading Doodle Bop experiences during opening night, inviting attendees to step into the same playful, collaborative creative process I’ve been sharing with students, teachers, and teams.

One of my favorite parts of this project was creating this year’s event illustration for Instructure ! I wanted it to capture the spirit of what happens during a Doodle Bop experience—curiosity, collaboration, imagination, and the joy of making something together.

I can’t wait to see hundreds of educators adding their own creativity to the experience.

See you next week, Louisville 💙✨

A quick plein air painting session in Shawnee park!

The past several months in the studio I have felt lost, empty, completely drained of everything I thought I had an understanding of.

Imagine feeling the tide getting pulled so far off the shore that it reveals what’s been on the bottom floor, and with that exposure has come an unmooring and complete emptiness.

What started off as confusion and a fear, has become a slow trickle of trust in my own voice, a curious feeling my way through the hazy world of converging reality’s in my work.

I think this new painting is the beginning of an exploration in our own compartmentalized internal worlds where we have kept parts of ourselves hidden from other parts to feel safe, to protect, to hide from pain and hurt but also from joy, love and all the intimate parts of life.

This painting feels like an internal world shattering, converging, and ultimately giving life to a beautiful new world where everything is connected once again.

Thanks to Sarah J Zimmerman for capturing my work in progress!

I’m excited to see where this painting takes me today.

I recently finished a fun project for the Hamel Hawks Baseball baseball club! They are celebrating their 100 year anniversary as a ball club and are making limited edition baseball cards with my work. I can’t wait to see the final product. This was such a fun commission to work on! I loved seeing the type and Hawk Bat come to life.