Finding a Likeness: Portrait Drawing for Newbies with Nicholson Baker

Have you ever been curious about illustration but don’t know where to start? Novelist and journalist Nicholson Baker thought the same thing until he started teaching himself the craft of drawing during the COVID-19 lockdown. Learn the basics of portraiture from Rochester native Nicholson Baker, author of Finding A Likeness: How I Got Somewhat Better at Art (2024) and over a dozen other novels and works of nonfiction. Beyond drawing instruction, attendees will learn how making a portrait, much like writing a character in a story or novel, can be an act of intimacy that inspires empathy, humanity, and social cohesion.

Baker’s portraits will be on view at the gallery in Hinterland Studio from September 10 – October 17.

Nicholson Baker has written seventeen books, including The Mezzanine, Vox, Human Smoke, The Anthologist, Baseless, and an art book, The World on Sunday, in collaboration with his wife Margaret Brentano. Several of his books have been New York Times bestsellers, and he has won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a James Madison Freedom of Information Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the Herman Hesse Prize. Baker has two grown children; he and his wife live on the Penobscot River in Maine.

This workshop is presented as part of our Rochester Reads 25th Anniversary programming. Baker’s portraiture of Palestinian media workers, Israeli peace activists, and everyday people from all over the world speak to the themes in Omar El Akkad’s memoir, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.