On March 8, 2020 Kathie Manthorne gave an in-person lecture at Frederic Church’s Olana. Following the reception at a nearby private residence, we drove back to Manhattan. For the next three and a half months, we seldom left our apartment. Our neighborhood emerged as one of the city’s hot zones during the spread of Covid-19. By April we had grown accustomed to a constant wail of sirens, as ambulances ferried the sick and dying to overcrowded hospitals. Every night at seven o’clock, the neighborhood erupted in primal rhythms, drummed on pots and pans. Cheers and cries filled the air, in cacophonous gratitude to front-line health care workers battling the widening pandemic.

It was the second time in twenty years that health care crises had reshaped my artistic practice. The first was personal. Hospitalized for nearly a month at the end of 2005, during my recuperation I realized the possibilities of painting in books. The second was this global pandemic that has caused may of us to reassess our missions in life. The manuscript for Sketchbook Traveler: Hudson Valley had been delivered just as New York went into lockdown. The book would be released in November. Unable to get to my studio in Haverstraw, publishing quotidian blogpost became my artistic practice. From April 1 to June 8, I published sixty-nine in total. Read them all here: LINK

Since June 15, 2020, I published forty-two more. Turning my attention to new projects in the coming year, each week I will publish new content. Unlike the hundred-and-eleven that have appeared since April of last year, future installments will be available in full only by subscription, accessible via links emailed to your inbox. Blogposts will be visible  for a limited time, during which subscribers will be able view the stories online, or download them in PDF format, to read at their leisure. Subscriptions are free. Sign up now .

Now available to own:    Sketchbook Traveler: Hudson Valley

McElhinney’s work is featured in the new book The American West in Art: Selections from the Denver Art Museum. Edited by Thomas Brent Smith, with an introduction by Daniel Flores and texts by Erika Doss, Jennifer R. Hennemen and Molly Medakovich. Five Continents Editions. Milan. 2020

Coming soon: Sketchbook Traveler: Southwest. Release date: Spring 2022

James Lancel McElhinney is represented by Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico,

and by William Havu Gallery in Denver, Colorado.

Sketchbook Traveler: Journeys & Journals is published by Needlewatcher Editions. PO Box 233, Essex, New York. 12936. editions@needlewatcher.com