In biblical Hebrew the verb lada’at, “to know,” refers primarily to experiential learning. And that was the core problem with my painting. I knew about paint, but I didn’t really know it. Not like the men I worked with, who had spent years interacting with it and scrubbing and mixing it. These experiences of knowing, truly knowing, were lacking in my life—and so many of us as young men had missed them. We had knowledge of things through books and the Internet, but not through working, failing, and