26 February 2026

Twenty years ago, I wrote a blog that, like many others of the early aughties, was initially less concerned with form or topic than with expression, but which was eventually dominated by culture reviews and accounts of shows I’d seen, the latter primarily from the music scene in Southeast Michigan (and overwhelmingly Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti). I ran out of juice in the early teens and stopped writing, but even after my pivot to visual art, I kept having mental scribbles that eventually crept into my creative-focused posts for The Avocado (a pop-culture-centric site written and largely populated by former and occasionally current commenters from The A.V. Club). While I, like many others, have long bemoaned the growing lack of independent voices in online or physical media (whether in culture, politics, or anywhere else), I was convinced I didn’t have it in me to meaningfully challenge the situation, not least based on past experience.

This is still probably true, but after writing a bio for this site that came real close to being pro forma after I hived off a bunch of tangential discussions and diatribes, I came to the conclusion that I ought to include some of the latter hereon as they shed a little light on some of my influences, preoccupations, procedures and goals for whoever’s interested. So every now and again, I plan to post a few thoughts in this space, whether on my own art practice or wider related topics that concern me or my work. While I’m not sure if I’ll keep this in blog form or split these into general standing posts, I’ll keep to a periodic release for now, not least as I’d love to see more discussion on various artistic topics. Evidence from the aforementioned threads and elsewhere suggests at least a latent appetite for an exchange of ideas not licensed by a large existing forum (Reddit, Instagram, etc.). If there’s already one out there, please let me know!! Either way, I’ll be posting again in a few days (probably Monday) and I’ll see how this goes.

2 March 2026

When I started drawing again over ten years ago, I did… whatever I liked, but I began to gravitate to a couple of recurring fantasy themes as well as pictures of ordinary people in peculiar or quasi-supernatural circumstances, primarily in ink done over pencil underdrawings. My drawing owes a lot to the inspiration of role models like Hogarth, Daumier, and especially Goya, the last my all-time favorite artist not least for his constant openness to new ideas and methods. While the occasional waking nightmare of Los Caprichos (1797-99) is probably the central imaginative model for my drawing, Goya’s relentless humanity and interest in people have served as a lodestone for my work in general. The Ashcan School of the early twentieth century US–particularly John Sloan’s illustrations and paintings of a growing New York City thronged with new Americans–served as another.

As the pandemic leveled off—though I was one of those partially introverted jamokes who took to the solitude of quarantine a little too well—I was anxious to use the returning patterns of my local life—live music, barroom society, the daily rhythms of living in a small city (however precious and college-bound)—as material for pictures. I had just geared up to do so when I started to realize that I might be the only person I know that’s actually doing this. I figured, in 2022 and ’23, that I’d be entering into a moment when artists similarly contended with the slow stagger back to some form of normalcy—even in the face of pandemic backlash and creeping authoritarianism. Whether fairly or not, I didn’t find that to be the case.

There’s plenty of drawing going on, to be sure—I participate semi-regularly in figure-drawing and sketch sessions in Detroit and Hamtramck as well as Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, and the enthusiasm and talent on display are generally infectious and inspiring. I’ve also become familiar with urban sketching, where people online and off share and collaborate on ink, pencil, and watercolor drawings of towns and cities across the world. Social media in general crowds with images of actors, anime or manga characters, and fanfic wishcasting. So drawing is easy to find and there are a lot of wonderful examples (and a massive variety of styles—maybe less so in urban sketching, but still). What doesn’t seem to be in evidence anywhere (that I can find) are genre pictures of daily life, whether stylized or realistic.

There are a few local examples of something like it; the painted landscapes done of my town of Ann Arbor are often expertly rendered, usually watercolor or oil. I’ve come to see them as a microgenre of their own, not least as they habitually feature on the covers of our local monthly The Ann Arbor Observer. There’s very little, though, that’s specific or definite about the people—local shops, restaurants and landmarks are lovingly portrayed, but the human figures milling about, talking (maybe?) with the lightest of gestures are frequently indistinct and often (literally) faceless. I’d joke that there wasn’t much that was “more Ann Arbor” than being more concerned with buildings than people, but the more I looked around for other examples, the more this felt like a society-wide issue (and the more familiar I became with urban sketching, a global one).

I’ve had the odd conversation about this with other artists and art lovers, and it’s struck a strong but limited chord. Today’s world and artistic economy are obviously far different from those of my aforementioned role models, and it’s certainly questionable how relevant said practice is in these days of instant digital pictures and, say, selfie and influencer culture. I can accept that what I do is an archaic pursuit, but it’s still difficult to believe that hardly anyone else seems to be systematically shaping pictorial narratives from observed scenes and details of ordinary life. I find it such a natural extension of humanity’s engagement with its world, and my inability to find examples in general from other artists working today grew downright perplexing.

So I decided to do something about it, first maybe subconsciously and then increasingly with something of a passion. I’d noticed, too, shortly before the pandemic, how little middle ground there seemed to be between hyper-conceptual work of the kind done (and taught) in art schools and found in contemporary museums and galleries and the kind of easily accessible quotidian work—landscapes in particular—that seemed to have changed little since the nineteenth century (and which is readily available at a variety of local, galleries and art fairs, not least Ann Arbor’s). There’s nothing wrong with either, but the widespread lack of alternatives was baffling, assuming it hasn’t (as I increasingly suspect) been largely channelled into graphic novels or online venues. Helping to fill this void didn’t start out as a personal mission, but… here we are.