Five years ago I met the North Carolina-born painter Beverly McIver in a Creative Capital workshop hosted by my state’s arts council. McIver, who had by then won a Guggenheim for her intimate portraits and self-portraits, led a session about the importance of claiming goals, especially the hardest-to-reach ones. She had recently moved back to her home state to take care of her disabled sister after the death of their mother, and was determined to keep that promise while also advancing her artistic practice and career. She told us that she collected her biggest aspirations in a notebook — literally — and opened a spiral-bound journal, thick with clippings and photographs, to show us the objects of her desire...