Keith Duncan doesn't have a studio. He works out of a ground-floor apartment he shares with his brother in Gretna, Louisiana. On the day I visited him, the sliding doors to the concrete porch were open. A boy—still in diapers—eyed us from a balcony above, but Duncan is used to the attention. Neighbors in the artist's sprawling housing complex often wander in to check out the latest painting tacked to the wall. He is no doubt the only working artist they know, and consequently many often mistake his profession for a hobby. That hasn't prevented them from making suggestions for how he can improve his canvases, including some he doesn't take like: "You should add aliens to this one."

In 2003, after graduating from Cooper Union in New York City, Mores McWreath had the letters WW tattooed onto his bicep. His inverted initials and the monogram of his alter ego Will Westlake, the tattoo now resembles a pale stencil. His body literally rejected the ink. The incident makes a striking metaphor for the relationship between McWreath, the artist, and Westlake, a recurrent character in his art. Ironically, it has also come to symbolize a sense of failure for McWreath that he embraces and actively cultivates in his practice-failure to be unique, failure to communicate, failure to make the "right" choice.