Jonathan Sherman holds out a mason jar filled with a beautiful powder of the richest, most shocking blue. It’s ground stone—lapis lazuli from Afghanistan—and he’s using it to mix his own oil paint. He scoops a bit of the powder onto a marble board and adds a few drops of amber-hued Italian linseed oil that he thickened in the south-facing summer sun for three weeks. It’s a meticulous task but seems fitting for Sherman,
