Phil Knoll first showed with Bill Arning in 1988 at White Columns, where he proved himself a true visual obsessive. His humorous artist statement claims he began drawing before birth, etching images onto the inside of his mother’s womb with the nail of his left index finger. Anyone who knows the density and relentlessness of his work might suspect he is only half joking. A protégé of Peter Saul at the University of Texas, Knoll is similarly fearless in drawing from cartooning, old-master painting, farm illustration, and reportage, folding these influences into his own idiosyncratic vision.