This straightforward, relaxed interview suggests that two serious artists can live happily under the same roof.

Rather than getting on one another's nerves, as Gauguin and Van Gogh were wont to do while they briefly resided together, married Cincinnati artists Ann Applegate and Stewart Katz, not only seem to love one another; like a team, they rely on each other for moral support. When multi-media Applegate goes through what she calls a "blockage" -- an "artist's block" -- she works in another medium. But she often seeks out her husband for advice and encouragement. Katz is more focused on a single medium, painting; he uses various approaches to keep his work flowing: "I try to go down as many paths as I possibly can," he says, freeing himself from his arduously structured abstract paintings to devote himself to more whimsical creations, often inspired by music.

Alas, producer Sandra Sleight-Brennan's attempt to describe Applegate's and Katz's work, using words like "imaginative" and "colorful," make for lackluster radio. I've looked at both artists' work online and find Applegate's kilim rugs especially striking and terrific.

The point is -- and here's the gist of Sleight-Brennan's piece -- that art is a life force. Mysterious, vital, it is, as Applegate says, "an internal sort of driven motor inside you."

Every week in "People" magazine when hedge fund billionaires and celebs tell us that big bucks and show-biz glitz equal a Bergsonian elan vital, the thesis of this piece needs to be heard -- and replayed. To be sure, Applegate and Katz's Indian Hill neighborhood of Cincinnati is upscale; neither of them is a starving artist. But Indian Hill is not New York City's gallery-choked Chelsea; Ohio is not the Empire State.

As a fellow Buckeye, I appreciate this unpretentious fireside chat. If Applegate and Katz appear bourgeois, they're as obsessively driven as Gauguin and Van Gogh.