“It’s a bit embarrassing,” says Jackson Joyce, “but I have this drawing from when I was a child where I’d written that I wanted to be a painter when I grew up. I guess I’ve always gravitated towards it. I could never imagine doing anything else with my life.” 

On a breezy summer morning, we meet Joyce at his studio in Brooklyn, light and spacious with exposed floorboards and rows of the artist’s paintings propped and hung on the clean white walls. We’re greeted by his rescue dog, Freddie, “he looks like a cartoon,” says Joyce with a chuckle. Spindly limbs, a shock of white fur and little dark eyes.