K.B. Dixon’s work has been described as original, clever, pithy, lyrical, insightful, gonzo, and laugh-out-loud funny. His new novel, A Painter’s Life, is a characteristically mischievous oddity. A mix of biographical scraps, journal entries, review excerpts, and interviews, it is an intimate and introspective tour of the art world—a portrait of the sometimes portraitist Christopher Freeze. Focusing in part on Freeze’s friends, family, and fellow artists—as well as his relationship with his frazzled dealer and his would-be monographer—it is an inventive, seriocomic look at one peculiar man’s ceaseless struggle to make something beautiful.