“I like American Gothic themes in particular, so I was very pleased when Nicholas Blechman asked me to illustrate a book review of Marilynne Robinson’s Lila. Any excuse to draw clouds like Thomas Hart Benton does. And there’s something desperately compelling about a solitary girl with no shoes whose only possession is a knife. My friend Matty Huynh, who had enthusiastically introduced me to Robinson’s work earlier in the year, bought me the novel at a time when I desperately needed the grocery money.”