2003-12-04 - 8:01 a.m.

dear escoda,

evrey time i finish a painting, i buy a couple of new brushes. i can't remember who advised me in this practice, but i've done it ever since i moved to new york. it definitely motivates me to complete paintings and not leave them lying around unfinished. i love buying new brushes, almost as much as i love haggling over pigment.

i make most of my own paint. what surfaces i use i have made by friends and usually end up trading paint for them. i have a very personal connection to the materials i use and it makes a difference to me. when i was painting in an area with blue ochre yesterday, i got a mental picture of one of my fellow paintmakers, up to his elbows grinding linseed oil and blue ochre and smiling like a fool because it's his favorite color. when making paint, i would often get a certain taste in my mouth with certain colors (and which had nothing to do with the chemical makeup of the pigments themselves). for example, i'd taste citrus while grinding cadmium orange, lemon frosting while grinding titanium yellow, peanut butter while grinding raw sienna.

i'm painting like mad recently. i'm in that kind of superproductive phase that every painter i know hopes and prays for. i've been spending every spare minute i can carve out in my studio. since november 21, i've completed 2 paintings and am well through a third. they are intimate portraits and i'm deeply in love with the paintings themselves. so i've spent more time than usual in the brush aisle at the art supply store.

on tuesday, i was set to begin a new painting and i decided to go into the city for brushes. there's an art supply here in my neighborhood, but most of their brushes have synthetic bristles and i don't always like how they feel. i've been using mostly my sable and mongoose brushes for the portraits. i've even set my hog bristle brushes aside for now. the sables offer better control, but i sometimes get frustrated at how soft their touch is to the canvas. at the place on third avenue, i found some lovely sables by manet and raphael, and i also picked up a #4 filbert hog bristle made by your company.

the minute i dipped the #4 into the cadmium red light i was in love. it draws like a pen, it holds a lot of paint in the bristle, and its stiff enough against the canvas to really make a mark. i had a friend advise my early in my career not to paint an entire paintng with the same brush, but i'm telling you, i could complete the latest painting with the #4 and noone would be the wiser. the #4 is capable of a wide range of marks and i dip it in the paint about half as much as any other brush. its like the ideal brush.

i'm going back to third avenue today to buy about seven more of them.

i'm a person who appreciates good craftsmanship and your brushes are by far my favorites. even the long, heavy handle feels good in my hand. i've never had the varnish crack and peel off the outside of an escoda brush, the way it has on nearly every brush i've used for more than 6 months. please keep making these wonderful tools. i don't know you the way i know the man who buys my pigments for me or the guy who stretches my canvas, but i know every time i pick up one of your brushes that there are like-minded individual involved in their production. i feel like i know you already.