Between 1998 and 2006 Chad Attie produced 25 journals, in which are gathered the materials that inspire his paintings. These journals—like a child’s collection of small treasures or a naturalist’s specimen box—are repositories of found objects, pages from old books, scraps of material, photographs, drawings, colors and textures that capture the richness of his surroundings, from Los Angeles (where he calls home) to New York, Morocco, Cambodia and Burma, to name but a few. Reproduced here is a selection of pages from these journals, reflecting the transformative quality of Attie’s vision that creates permanence and beauty from the detritus of an ephemeral world.