Brian Allan Skinner: Artist & Author

The Artist

The Writer

The artist and writer in me were born four years after the end of World War II on Bob Dylan’s eighth birthday. The artist emerged first, pictures coming well before alphabets. Though I usually colored within the lines, I often embarked on wider explorations, such as melting crayons on the sides of our apartment radiator. This I later learned is called "encaustic." The technique did not impress my parents.

During my dozen years acquiring a Catholic education, I was exposed to an array of tools, media, and methods for making art. I entered my first art fair in Chicago, where I was born, just after high school. I won an award, but did not sell a single work, a pattern which is very much my style. At nineteen, I left home and attended the University of Illinois, working towards a degree in the liberal arts, an English major and an art minor. I never attained my degree since I had to work full-time in order to put myself through a course in real life. By the stage at which I had both money and time to again attend university, I no longer felt the need, except for the occasional class, workshop, or seminar.

I was married for twenty-six years, getting divorced and then moving to New York City. I lived and worked in Manhattan for twenty years, with jobs in publishing and photography. Following a massive stroke while out in the woods up in the Catskills with my chainsaw, I decided it was time to slow down a little. I moved to Taos, New Mexico, in 2015 where I still live and work. The thriving artistic and literary communities here continue to provide inspiration and support. Though I have composed a few musical works, too, I realized I’d need another lifetime to pursue that goal and give it my best. Maybe next time.

I have a recollection of writing my first "poems" in crayon, but I had no early aspirations to become an author. Writing is what I had to do to pass my classes. Thanks to my excellent teachers at every step along the way, from third grade to my junior year of college, I had a firm foundation in how to write and communicate. But, not yet having found my "voice," I didn’t know what I should write about.

My family were an odd assortment of jokers and storytellers. Their tales, whether true or made-up, fascinated me. My paternal grandfather’s stories were particularly vivid. Their telling, especially after his working for an undertaker, were enough to drive my mother from the table. Many years later, researching family genealogy, I learned my grandfather was in a witness protection program back in the 1920s and that his entire life and identity were fictional. Things could be made-up, I discovered, without being untrue.

I worked for eighteen years as a cabinetmaker. A few evenings per week and some Sundays I devoted to my writing, unconsciously employing the principles and tech- niques of carpentry in constructing my tales. I began sub- mitting my short stories to an array of publications, major to minor, and wound up getting nearly 150 of them published. But the income was not going to replace my day job.

In New York I worked for a string of publications, but always as their production artist. I also learned about book design and photography. In Taos I found my first book publisher, Nighthawk Press, and the rest of my tale is still writing itself.