Ranny Macdonald describes painting as a threshold experience, a place where something begins to take over. “I get a sort of rush from it,” he says, “to be on that threshold… it feels like something else is kind of taking over, you know what needs to be done and you’re listening.” In those moments, the […]
Cathleen Clarke has always been drawn to the spaces where memory begins to thin out. Not the sharp, documentary version of the past, but the gaps that form over time. The voids. The moments that cannot be fully retrieved. She is interested in what happens next, when imagination steps in to fill what is missing.
For Logan Sylve, painting is a steadfast companion. “I feel like painting is my first love and the most reliable companion I have,” he says. In a world of unpredictability and disappointment, creativity stands above it all. Even when the act of making art can feel frustrating, the rewards are deeply sustaining, offering a sense
Mario Picardo approaches painting as a space of personal freedom. The studio is not a site of pressure or anxiety for him, but a place of pleasure and ease. Each day he arrives to work, he describes the act of painting as happiness itself. It is not something he worries about or negotiates with. It
Originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, Hill Spriggins has been living and working in Brooklyn, New York for the past seven years. She identifies herself simply and decisively as a painter. While people often ask whether she draws, photographs, or works in other mediums, her answer is consistent. Painting is her focus, the only practice she
In the studio, drawing and painting are the moments when Henry Ward feels most fully himself, even as he admits that the act of making art can feel heavy and unavoidable. He describes it as a compulsion that remains inseparable from how he understands himself and the world. If he could choose not to make
Art school teaches you technique, composition, and craft—it shows you how to make work. What it rarely teaches is how to talk about your work, build a consistent practice, or keep creating once the structure disappears. For many artists, graduation marks the beginning of a quieter, more difficult phase of their practice — one without
Some cities don’t just host art — they actively condition it. Artists travel to these places not only to see work, but to understand how context, pressure, and community shape practice. Below are cities that consistently emerge in interviews as formative, followed by key institutions and galleries that anchor their scenes. New York City New
The Limits of the Exhibition Exhibitions are the cornerstone of contemporary art, serving as the primary way audiences encounter work. They offer a carefully curated encounter, a visual and spatial narrative that situates objects within a gallery context. But exhibitions, by their very nature, are inherently incomplete. They privilege finished outcomes over the processes that
There has never been anything Eleanor Arbor enjoys more than making. It is not about prestige or outcome, but about the act itself. She describes art not as a special talent set apart from the rest of life, but as a way certain people are wired. In her words, if you are truly an artist
