I've been thinking a lot lately about beginnings. Not the polished, finished kind — but the raw, uncertain, quietly electric kind. The kind that happen before anyone else is watching. That's what underpainting is to me. If you're not familiar with the term, underpainting is the initial layer of a portrait — typically worked in a single color or limited tones — where the artist establishes value, shadow, and form before any color is introduced. It's foundational work. Structural. And to most...

Does Every Painting Need a Story? I Used to Say No. I Still Might. I've asked this question before and I'll probably ask it again. Why does every piece of art need a story? Why can't a painting simply exist — in all its color and light and quiet beauty — without being pressed for meaning? Without someone standing in front of it waiting for it to explain itself? Some of my favorite pieces have no narrative agenda whatsoever. They're just beautiful. They're just there . And I've always...

There's something I've been sitting with lately, and I have a feeling I'm not the only one. I paint. I sketch. I write — under multiple pen names, across multiple genres. I run my own small press. I publish. I show up every single day and do the work. Nobody handed me any of it. Not one piece of it came easy or free. It came from early mornings and late nights and the kind of stubborn persistence that doesn't make for glamorous storytelling but gets the job done anyway. And yet. In certain...