Illustrated Journal

"The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them."

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Through this journal, we are inviting you into a new way of thinking and doing, one which begins with questioning everything we take for granted.

In particular, how we contribute – or think we contribute – to a better world. We will not have all the answers, but we want to ask better questions.

Featured
November 28, 2025

The Violence of Bureaucracy

“Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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December 9, 2022

Post Wars’ Quick Fixes

Guest Post
December 2, 2022

The Artist as Critic

“From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, … but nothing I did before the age of 70 was worthy of attention. At 73, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am 86, so that by 90 I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At 100, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at 130, 140, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive.”— Katsushika Hokusai, also known as Gakyō Rōjin Manji (The Old Man Mad About Art)

Thinking
November 25, 2022

We Have to Talk About Hope

Invitation
November 18, 2022

The Artist as Historian

"Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior … It is the story, not the others, that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind."– Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah

Thinking
October 21, 2022

The Role of the Artist

“Without the person of outspoken opinion, however, without the critic, without the visionary, without the nonconformist, any society of whatever degree of perfection must fall into decay. Its habits (let us say virtues) will inevitably become entrenched, tyrannical; its controls will become inaccessible to the ordinary citizen.” — Ben Shahn

Thinking
November 4, 2022

The Artist as Translator

“Finally, at twelve-and-a-half, I went under the house and tried to speak poetry. I found out I did, indeed, have a voice. It was so important to me that it gave me a sense, always, of what it was to be an artist. As a young person, I knew then that to be an artist meant taking responsibility for the time one takes up and the space one occupies. That is being an artist. And that doesn’t mean one has to write down poetry or compose the piece of music or paint the important painting which lifts the soul of the human being or dance that dance or design that building. It means really being an artist in the heart.”— Maya Angelou

Thinking

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