My studio has been in many places. A studio is as much about the objects inside it as it is about the space itself. The rooms change, but the tools—the easel, the taboret, the brushes—stick around. They carry the history.

Right now, my studio setup includes a large easel, a smaller easel, a custom taboret, and a tool chest that houses brushes, paints, and mediums. My main easel is a double-masted H-frame studio easel—sturdy and tall. We bought it the year I started taking painting classes during undergrad. My wife and I were living in Las Vegas and picked it up at Blick. It was one of the larger ones on display and, luckily, on sale. I assembled it in the spare room that doubled as my studio. I remember how clean it looked—the pale wood, the smooth surface. At first, it almost felt wrong to use it. Like the blank page of a new sketchbook, untouched and full of potential.

Over the years, the easel changed. The wood darkened and picked up stray bits of oil paint along its edges. Stickers found their way onto its frame. I even hit it with accidental swaths of spray paint during a brief and chaotic experiment with that medium. But the moment it first felt like an artist’s easel was during my initial attempt at a 100-day painting project. My goal: paint 100 small (5x7 inch) figure studies in oil.

I had been painting portraits and figures off and on for a few years, but always felt unsure—about my palette, about proportion, about how to really see. That 100-day project helped me push through. I painted after work, after dinner, after bedtime routines. My wife and I would put on a show—she’d watch, I’d paint. Those early sessions sometimes took 2–3 hours each. The alcove I painted in had three windows and just enough room for my easel, a taboret, and the long sideboard table I’d built to store paints and surfaces. It was small but perfect—I could be immersed in the work and still present with my family. That season became one of my most prolific.

Eventually, I became faster. My color sense sharpened. I accepted a few commissions. Sold a few paintings. And though the daily pace of the project slowed, I made it to painting #56. The easel bore more and more signs of use—the paint, the wear, the softening of the wood where my hands gripped it the most. It had broken in. It had earned its place in the studio.

Then we moved. My painting space shifted to the garage, and it suddenly became harder to sit down and paint. The barrier wasn’t just physical—it was psychological. I still worked on commissions, and occasionally squeezed in a figure study, but the flow had changed. And then the pandemic hit. I had to pause oil painting almost entirely while I shifted my focus to design and illustration to support my family. My easel stood in the corner of the garage, quiet, waiting.

But eventually, that pull returned. Quiet at first—just a thought here and there. Then louder. I started carving out small windows of time, returning to old brushes, cleaning dried paint from my palette, organizing supplies. I picked up a brush again—not for a commission or deadline, but because I needed to. I’ve since returned to painting regularly, focusing on both figure and landscape work, indoors and out. My easel, scarred and splattered and softened by time, has come back to life. Not as a relic, but as a partner. A steady presence in this new chapter.

James Elkins once wrote: "To a non-painter, oil paint is uninteresting and faintly unpleasant. To a painter, it is the life's blood: a substance so utterly entrancing, infuriating, and ravishingly beautiful that it makes it worthwhile to go back into the studio every morning, year after year, for an entire lifetime."

And for me, much of that story has been told right here—on this easel.