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We were honored to receive nearly eight hundred applications for this issue; among the pool, more than one hundred art schools were represented. Caitlin did a fantastic job of winnowing down these applications to the forty gifted artists that you will find in the pages herein.

Last year is now behind us, and perhaps not too soon: 2024 was a strange year that pivoted on economic uncertainty, two wars, and an election cycle as bizarre as it was unsatisfying. Regardless of one’s political inclinations, it’s hard to deny that the narrative sucking up so much oxygen made it difficult to focus on much else. As I write this, Donald Trump has, once again, just been sworn into office. Though this does not make me particularly happy, I will not miss the melodrama of the last twelve months; I have been to this rodeo enough times to know that the next four years will bring its share of good and bad, but that we, collectively, will get through it.

Of course, the art world was also not immune to the vicissitudes of 2024. By all accounts, it was the most challenging year our fragile ecosystem has faced in more than a decade. Artists certainly kept making work, but the infrastructure supporting their efforts was put to a serious test. Over the past twelve months, we’ve seen non-profit institutions laying off workers and numerous commercial gallery spaces shuttering their doors permanently. I can’t tell you how many emerging artists I’ve spoken to…

There is an expression that goes something like, “When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.” The concept is a little brutish but I like the resourcefulness of the sentiment, especially when you replace “hammer” with “paintbrush” and “nail” with “painting.” When you have a paintbrush, everything starts to look like a painting.

I find it useful to remember that it can be a blunt instrument that taps into the way we see the world. Painting can be constructive even when it feels wholly unsuitable; yet, sometimes that’s when it does its best work. Symbolism, realism, formalism, maximalism, and hard-edge abstraction are still good tools and virtuosity maybe isn’t the useless counterpoint to criticality that many critics still make it out to be. All of this feels especially prescient in the contributions of the MFA students and recent graduates in this issue. The artists’ approaches to process, form, material, composition, and the parameters of the discipline play out in infinitely diverse ways, engaging with the histories of painting while also constructing its future.

The sources of inspiration are clearly varied in the works featured in these pages, but one of the striking throughlines that emerged across the submissions was an express interest in familiar subjects and situated knowledge. For many, painting begins with proximity. Kyler Pahang’s barbershop portraits of smocked figures, for example, are deliberately made soft through an extremely close focus, distinct from but perhaps related to Diego Pablo Málaga’s personal ode to his dutiful…