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.