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I reviewed Svetlana Alexievich’s fascinating and galling oral history of the end of the Soviet Union this week and it got me thinking—not for the first time—about what a dangerous thing nostalgia is. In that book, dozens of people, from all strata of society, recall one of the bloodiest eras in human history fondly and long forContinue reading “Secondhand Time”

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a massive portrait project. It’s not the one of my friends, which I’ve shared with you before, but, what will eventually be about a hundred sketched likeness of writers and artists. They will be used to illustrate the contributors’ page of a literary journal called The Scofield.Continue reading “Dramatis Personae”

A few weeks ago a guy commissioned me to do a painting of his relatives’ Beverly bungalow. They were about to put the house up on the market and move out of town and he wanted to give them a picture to remember their home by. I like working from life best, but it would’veContinue reading “Places I’ve Lived”