I have spent an ungodly amount of time in school. I went to an atelier called “Water Street” in Brooklyn, It was a full time drawing academy that I attended for 4 years. It was an amazing experience, offset by the strangeness of LARPING a 19th century Parisian life in the early 90’s in New York. All I can say is we really got serious about shading and stuff like that. Can you say “Écorché”?

I then went to the Art Students League for 2 years. The league was crowded with people from everywhere, bustling and washed in history. I studied with Ron Scher, a truly gifted portrait painter. He wanted us to work as large as possible, which meant as big as could be safely transported on the subway.

This was probably plenty of school, but during a downturn in the economy I finished my undergraduate degree at Oneonta State college and got an MFA from the University at Buffalo.

Since then, I have taught as an adjunct at Oneonta, and Hartwick.

Always teaching drawing…always drawing.

I am late to illustration.

I am from a family of serious artists and was raised to loathe the illustrators that made the pictures that went with the stories I loved the most.  My own covert longings for the worlds conjured in the images of NC Wyeth were sublimated beneath a mountain of earnest well-meaning truth-seeking, aesthetic intervention proselytizers. I mean my parents.

Luckily the short phrase, “Life is short,” got me to take seriously the deeper desires of my heart.

I basically want to be involved in work that is scary, funny, fantastic, romantic, work that the kid in me would love.

I live in the Catskills, 3 hours North of NYC. I built my house. I don’t mean I hired a builder. I built the damned thing; crazy as it may sound, out of Straw Bales. I have a loving partner, a grown son, and a pack of dogs. It’s a great life. We walk every day in a protected forest that surrounds my house.

I am looking to collaborate with writers, thinkers, and storytellers, and want to be involved in projects that make a difference. I believe in good work, and the sacrifices necessary to get there.

Thanks,

Luke Dougherty