Bad at Sports Episode 929: Dan Attoe

Recorded on the fly during art fair week, live at NADA, this conversation with Dan Attoe moves from metal-kid origin stories to Zen meditation, daily practice, tattooing, landscape painting, and the unexpected turn toward writing a horror novel. Duncan opens with a personal note: a Dan Attoe painting has been hanging in his home for 22 years, a wedding gift that quietly embedded itself into the fabric of his life, which frames the conversation, and traces Attoe's arc from rural Idaho and northern Minnesota outsider to one of the most recognizable painters of his generation. Attoe talks about the seven-year run of making a painting every weekday, a discipline that functioned less as a productivity hack and more as a survival strategy. What began as wild, sex-and-drugs-and-rowdy-party imagery rooted in imagined social worlds gradually shifted toward the meditative landscapes he's now known for. These aren't observed sites but constructed psychic spaces, built from memory, attention, and what he calls a process of "composting" experience. Zen practice, daily drawing, and tattooing form a three-part studio structure that keeps the work in motion. Learning to tattoo on his own body sharpened his attention to contrast, permanence, and empathy, feeding directly back into the paintings. Along the way we get patches, skate culture, Methodist guilt, Barry McGee installations, Walker Art Center bookstore theory dives, and the long road from being told to abandon heavy-metal imagery to fully embracing it as the engine of a mature practice. The conversation closes on writing: how Stephen King, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and decades of accumulated art-world experience led Attoe to channel theory, narrative, and lived history into a horror novel. It's a talk about attention, energy, and letting the work tell you what it needs to become. Images courtesy of Western Exhibitions - A party for children, 2019 India ink and graphite on paper 7h x 7w in Fingertip Mountain, 2020 Oil on Canvas on Panel 24h x 24w in Forest Path with Glowing Orb, 2021 Oil on Canvas on Panel 36h x 24w in Dual Falls with Painted Arches, 2021 Oil on Canvas on Panel 36h x 24w in Names Dropped: Dan Attoe — Dan Attoe at Western Exhibitions — Dan Attoe at PPOW — Clouds Tattoo (Attoe's shop) — A Talking Tree — Barry McGee — Chris Johanson — Jean-Michel Basquiat — Titian — Giorgione — Arthur Danto — Dr. Woo — Natalie Goldberg — Stephen King — George Saunders — Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — Jean-François Lyotard — Jean Baudrillard — Walker Art Center — Iowa Writers' Workshop — Iron Maiden — Danzig — Twin Peaks — Dragonlance / Larry Elmore — New Art Dealers Alliance ––

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Bad at Sports Episode 929: Dan Attoe is an episode from Bad at Sports by Bad at Sports.

This episode is 54:42 long.

This episode was published on Feb 24, 2026.

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