Q: Originally from Philadelphia, what are some of your favorite things about living and working in The Golden State, and in Dumbo?

Peter: I now live outside the small town of Arcata, on the Northern California coast. It's very rural here and i like being surrounded by the outdoors.

Maria: Pete is the oldest, and I’m the youngest in a family of 6 kids. I live in Dumbo, Brooklyn. The thing I like about my neighborhood is its scale and cinematic views.

Q: Do you keep a sketchbook? What is the balance between the art you create on paper versus in the computer?

P: I don't keep a sketchbook, everything is stored in my head, a mobile device I take with me everywhere. I do sketches with pencil on tracing paper. After that it's all digital.

M: No sketchbook for me, either. With a scanner, everything can become digital. 

Q: What is the most important item in your studio?   

P: The five identical mechanical pencils I use for sketching. It all starts there.

M: My landline and my dog.  

Q: What do you like best about your workspace?

P: The view out the windows: Redwood trees going down the hill to Humboldt Bay and out to the breakers at Samoa Beach.

M:  It was once our apartment's (weirdly large) laundry room. It is now a perfectly sized tiny studio. Giant monitor, dark walls and a watermelon-colored desk. 

Q: Do you think your workspace needs improvement? If so, what would you change?

P: We just finished a renovation last summer, no more changes.

M: Nothing.

Q: How do you know when the art is finished?

P: Maria and I decide, and each has veto power.

M: Deadlines make you a better artist. 

Q: What makes you happy?

P: Kindness

M: Ditto.  

Q: What was your favorite book as a child?

P: A collection of Jack London stories. I read them over and over.

M: Harriet the Spy—a great adventure with a little girl who carefully observes people and does her own thing.

Q: What is the best book you’ve recently read?

P: Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle memoirs.

M: I just finished Patricia Highsmith's This Sweet Sickness. 

Q: If you had to choose one medium to work in for an entire year, eliminating all others, what medium would you choose?

P: I choose mechanical pencils. No sharpening needed, replaceable leads, endless drawing.

M: A camera

Q: If you could time travel to any era, any place, where would you go?

P: I would go back to 1997 to meet my wife Sylvia again. 

M: There is no better time to be a woman than now.  

Q: What is preoccupying you at the moment?

P: I’m working on the next issue of our Coin-Op comics anthology. Working out the pacing of the frames is taking a lot of time.

M: This Q +A. I’m shy.

Q: What are some of your favorite places/books/blogs/websites for inspiration?

P. Maria and I have been publishing our own comics, flip books and screen prints since 2008. The comic and zine fests we go to are filled with amazing artwork and artists. I'm always impressed by the creativity there.

M:  Agreed, nothing beats non-virtual interaction. Art always looks better in real life than on the screen.  

Q: What was the [Thunderbolt] painting or drawing or film or otherwise that most affected your approach to art? 

P: Seeing Orson Welles's Touch of Evil for the first time, in 1981, on a small black and white TV. The flamboyant editing and camera work leading you through the narrative connected to my interest in comics and drawing.

M: The Stenberg Brothers show at MoMA in the 90's. I was recently out of school, and I just remember being blown away. 

Q: What advice would you give a young artist about applying to an art school or college?

P: I learned a lot more after leaving school than I ever did in class.

M: Do not go into debt for art school. Also, stay interested in everything. 

Q: What would be your last supper?

P: A Luis Buñuel banquet: you can never leave.

M: 

Soup dumplings

An asparagus dish i had last month in Paris. 

The timpano from "Big Night"

My mother's chocolate cake. 

Since its my last meal, i guess I wont have to worry about overdoing it.

Peter and Maria Hoey are brother and sister artists. Since 2001 they have worked together on opposite coasts, relying on technology and a similar sense of humor to create their work. Their illustrations appear in magazines and newspapers, commercials, and advertising. Since 2007, they have published their work independently under their own Coin-Op Press.

Peter and Maria Hoey are represented by Gerald and Cullen Rapp.