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Driving Clement Greenberg to the Airport

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Clement Greenberg Wearing a Helmet (or the conversation he and I never had) I, too, would be skeptical of the following tale if this hadn’t involved me. This event I am about to describe took place back in the 1970s while I worked at a college art museum. The curator of modern art, whom I very recently spoke with (2018), remembered this visit, but not the purpose. There was no talk, event or exhibition. My role was to drive Clement Greenberg to the airport. During the drive we talked mainly about Picasso’s death and later work. I, unfortunately, remember no details of the conversation except that neither one of us cared much for Picasso’s late work. I believe he said that someday in the future people may give the paintings more consideration. I wish I had thought to record our conversation and I most certainly wish that I had at that time the knowledge and interest, which I now have in Pollock, so I might ask the questions that I would like answered. In particular, I would...
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Maybe I Am an Apple Tree

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Traditionally it works this way: The artist paints a picture. The art dealer shows it to a collector. Collector buys it and pays the dealer. The dealer gives a portion to the artist. The artist pays bills, which include studio rent. The dealer has bills to pay as well. The collector wakes up early each morning and smiles at the new framed artifact hanging in a hallway between the bedroom and bath. It works that way in fairy tales, the showing and sale of the artwork enable the artist to keep painting. It also gives the artist some emotional validation and an outlet for sharing his talent. What person doesn’t wish to share the fruits of his or her labors? It’s only natural we want others to taste, to read, to touch, to hear, to see, to appreciate what we do or make or create. “Come listen to this…”. It is human to want others to appreciate your work. But frankly, it can be a pain in the ass to stop working, when it is working that fills your spirit, just so others can take a peek...
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Snow Day

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Snow Day Pagan is such a strange word for you to use in connection with snowmen. I expect you intend something such as pre-Christian or pre-Muslim or pre-Organized religion. Snowmen are connected to those cultures and peoples who live in climates that have snow and especially have a history with the Ice Age. Those who stayed in place during the harsh winters rather than migrating great distances can relate to the snowman. To others the snowman is a game or curiosity. Is my book based upon fact, complete with smoking gun? No. Have you ever made a snowman and six months later examined the remains of what had been the snowman? When was the last time you ate a turkey for Thanksgiving? Where are the remains that prove you ate the bird? I have no proof that Ice Age humans made a decision to substitute human sacrifice with symbolic snowmen. But, when you look at any ancient children’s game you will find a darker origin that has been sanitized during the past hundred or so year...
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Lautrec and the Cardboard Paintings

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The So-Called Cardboard That Toulouse Lautrec Painted Upon Not all cardboard is created equal. Let me point out that Henri Toulouse Lautrec worked on canvas, paper, and what is called cardboard. The type of cardboard is not what comes to mind when we picture cardboard. It is neither corrugated nor the brownish processed kraft material composed of wood pulp. It is a pressed material that is sometimes known as pasteboard. The color is generally a neutral grey. If one takes a commercially available artist’s canvas panel and peals off the canvas, you would have a piece of pasteboard that approximates the material HTL painted upon using essence (gasoline) thinned oil paint. The medium allows for a non-gloss finish to the color When you see an illustration of one of Luatrec's paintings done with this medium on board you miss the luscious matte quality of the way the material first soaks into the pasteboard and then evaporates. So, why did Henri de Toulouse Lautrec use this p...
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Empty Bottle of Ink

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Today I Will Not Buy a Bottle of Ink I have a brush and a bit of dried ink in the bottm of my inkwell If I dampen the hairs of my brush resuscitate the residue I may not need to go buy a fresh bottle of India ink So what if the ink dries Gray not black visit Sandy Kinnee.com
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A Fantasy on Lascaux

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Found a Cave We found a cave Well maybe some credit to the dog He was chasing a rabbit Fell in Barked and barked We came to his rescue Deep hole Ran home to the tool shed Came back with rope Tied one end to a tree Got the dog out While in the pit Noticed it ran off Into pitch black Sprinted home again For a lantern This time Caves are like Halloween Night minus Moon and stars We crawled then Walked Crawled on our knees Do you know the smell Of kerosene lit Dank dirt? Imagine trick or treat After midnight No one comes to the door We pass through What we later call Galleries Stone chambers Convoluted Contorted walls Here and there Marks that Seem animal-like Might be depictions Of creatures Yet lack frames Silly scratches And smears of pigment Upon the rough surface We go back to The shed returning With chisels and hammers With great effort We plumb the walls Make a fine wine cellar Painted the walls mint green Maybe...
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Why I Do Not Use an Easel

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On the Flat No one has asked me a particular and obvious question. Why do most painters paint on an easel and I don’t? Perhaps they think they know the answer, that I am influenced by Pollock, a dripper-wanna-be. Or, the rejection of the easel could be a statement or choice. Maybe I do it because it’s different. No. The simple truth doesn’t go back to when I was three and painted with bare hands on the front porch floor with forest green oil paint, the better part of a gallon, too. It was because I have always worked on flat horizontal surfaces. If a large enough table was available that would be where I would draw or paint, otherwise the floor would do. Most kids have floors and tables. Everyone works that way or begins working on the flat. In art school you are expected to use an easel, unless you are focused on printmaking. Guess what? Etching, lithography, woodblock, and screenprinting were my media. All print forms are done on the flat. So, it is quite obvious t...
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A Terrible Hammer

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Pig Tail Plug with a Bakelite Casing At most I could have been seven, more likely I was six years old. The Catholic Church says the age of reason is seven, an age when you should know better and when sins count. Before seven you should be able to get away with murder, right? Apparently not as far as dad was concerned. When I was a couple years older I had friends whose fathers had a whole area in their basement called a workshop. The walls were covered with pegboard. That is where their dads displayed their tools. Each screwdriver was hung on a hook and arranged by type and size. Phillips head here, flat head there. Each tool was carefully outlined on the pegboard and the ends of every tool was dipped in orange rubber paint to make it clear these tools belonged together. The father’s initials were engraved on everything, even the hammer. The room was clean and tidy, everything sparkled. It even smelled of Lysol, like the rest of the house, not of sawdust or the making of...
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"Ugly Art", He Said

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Ugly Art He Said Brian wondered how I could spend so much time making ugly art when there is so much beauty in the world to paint Why not paint the lake in the morning? Roses and marigolds in a vase? Or the way sunlight makes a halo out of hair if you stand in just the right spot in the late afternoon? Brian was an old man I was a kid fresh out of art school Years passed And then Brian became an older man and didn't sleep anymore After his wife Lilian passed away she the one whose hair looked like a halo in the late afternoon Brian set up a studio in his basement A horizontal sheet of plywood covered his pool table A slab of Sumi ink, brushes, paper He promised to show me what he'd been doing down there alone and I promised to go look He said I'm sorry for what I said about you wasting time making ugly art It isn't ugly at all once you look at it instead of hair glowing in the late afternoon light "It is it...
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"Toile Libre" - On the Hanging of a Stretcherless Painting

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On the Hanging of Unstretched Canvas As my paintings are not painted on an easel, but on the floor from all sides, there is no actual up or down. There is only painted side and unpainted side. (in some cases, both sides of the canvas are painted). In a perfect world I would invite those participating in the artwork to experience the painting as I do, by walking around and stepping on the canvas. I like to think of the painting as a canoe or a rowboat or kayak. You may enter it or swim around it, looking in. It is only when you get into the boat that you can let it carry you away. There is nothing wrong with watching a kayak from a distance, but it is not the same experience as is intended for the vehicle. My paintings are intended to carry one away from the day to day, not necessarily to white water. As there is no imperative horizontal or vertical, no absolute right or left. The unstretched paintings may be hung either horizontal or vertical. There is only a sense ...
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The Painting Mantra: a Liberating Sameness

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Like a Broken Record Back in the old days of technology I learned how to splice magnetic tape end to end to create an endless tape loop. A tape loop only repeats. The message is always the same. Back in the old days of technology I learned how to splice magnetic tape end to end to create an endless tape loop. A tape loop only repeats. The message is often the same. No. The message is always the same. Sometimes it is necessary to repeat to get a point across. Sometimes repetition is a weapon or a mantra. A mantra is anything but a weapon. In those old days when tape loops were new to me, they seemed a fresh experience, hypnotic, white noise that could create a sound texture, something like a curtain or screen to filter out the world. When I work in my studio, I am alone with my brushes and colors, cut off from the world by a wall of sound. I hit the repeat button and no distracting thoughts or sounds interrupt my concentration. A visitor to my studio may find the repet...
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On the Judicious Use of Hot Water

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On the Use of Hot Water Except when a water heater fails and that does happen often at the wrong time we take the flow of hot water for granted This morning I took a cold shower By cold I mean frigid not lukewarm I am in a petite Parisian apartment I unwittingly depleted the small hot water supply by simply washing breakfast dishes then hopping in the shower I braved it out Tomorrow I will not repeat this mistake. Tonight, after washing the dinner dishes I remembered that my grandmother boiled enough water for two portions of her dishwashing regimen She washed in cold water dipped the plate in a tepid rinse basin stood the dishes in a rack then when all the washing and rinsing was complete poured boiling water over the dinnerware Her pots and pans and china and tableware were so clean you could eat off them
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Sofa-Sized Art and the Modern Residential Wall

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Sofa-Sized Art and the Modern Residential Wall I am a sofa-sized artwork on an off-white modern residential wall. Some might presume I was painted by Bob Ross. But my collector tells anyone who asks if I am an original Ross, that, no, Bob Ross never painted such a large painting as I. She then jabs her index finger at a scribbled name on my lower left, your right: Monet. C. Monet to be exact: Chas. That is probably short for Charles, a strange name for the factory artist who painted me, especially since she and the five other artists in the same row of easels all sign their paintings the same way: C. Monet. It is funny knowing I am a clone, or clone-like. I bet if I had coffee with another version of myself, I would expect they get that Bob Ross comparison. Or, maybe not. I’ll never know. I don’t drink coffee. I am a sofa-sized painting on canvas with a metallic gold, aluminum frame. The gold frame makes me feel special. I was available unframed, my canvas carefull...
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Addressing Holiday Cards and Monumental Paintings

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Nylon Pop-Up Tents It’s that time of year when people scribble addresses from the upper left hand of those envelopes they received last December onto the center portion of new, blank Christmas card envelopes. They sign and insert colorful seasonal cards, often depicting conifers or sub-zero precipitation in glorious whiteness. Maybe a snowman is featured. Those who receive these greeting cards may not have seen the sender in a very long time, if so, a one-page sheet of paper folded to fit inside the card may possibly be included. The sheet is an annual up-date, a year in review. Other people forgo the Cliff Notes and make fruitcake or cookies to gift. I instead write about what has tickled my fancy, the relative size of artworks over time. The Effect of War Upon Art The primary effects of war are obvious. War is a tsunami that ripples across the cultural world for years. Even if only combatants suffered and all else was untouched, things would be impacted. There h...
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Toss Me a Fish?

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Would You Toss Me a Fish? What I write often begins as a mental burst that I must immediately jot down or lose. If paper is available, I scribble the thought. If not, I put it on my phone. Yet, even if the note is recorded on the phone, it is essentially a scrawl or doodle. Typically, the initial idea is a kernel. If I know I am going to have to wait to sit at my laptop, I usually write something title-like, as a mnemonic device. The thing that got me wanting to write can then be recalled at the appropriate time. Maybe the core is a phrase or simply a topic or a sensation. Like most things summoned by a mnemonic key, there is frequently also some older memory evoked. Whether given the opportunity in the moment, or later, I record my thoughts quickly. The words tend to come to me in a stream. In a manner of speaking, it is the reverse of bailing out a leaky boat. I scoop up the thoughts by the bucket load and pour them into my dinghy. I dump them as scribbles using the ...
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I Do Not Read in Public

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A Reading in a Gallery It was the first and only time I read my pieces in public. Lucky for me the attendance was sparse. What the small number of people meant was that I tortured fewer people than I might have. The venue was adjacent to an art gallery, a small hall. There were chairs and a lectern and a microphone. So, the trappings looked serious. The idea was, simply put, listening to what I had written would open doors for those who looked at my visual work. The short pieces, poems, and dream recordings stood on their own, not illustrations for visual art. Nor was the artwork an illustration of the writing. Each piece was short, but many short pieces added up. Still the reading might help understand my work, which has often been described as visually poetic. So, I recited one little piece, and like eating potato chips or peanuts, read another. I asked how long we had the room. The room was mine as long as I wanted. After a few pieces I asked if I should continue. Th...
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Artworks Up In Flames

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Art and the Forest Fire (Three Fewer Kimonos) To be specific the three artworks of mine that were in that house, gracing the living room and dining room, were all early kimono pieces of mine from the 1970s. Each kimono-shaped piece was composed of four sheets stitched together, all of handmade rag. The source of the rag fiber was of my own clothing, as well as some my wife offered from her closet. This use of my own clothing increased by personal investment in the already labor intensive making of the paper. Two shaped deckles helped form the two particular shaped elements. Two shapes defined the body and two the sleeves. I made the paper from the pulped clothing. This use of my own clothing increased by personal investment in the already labor intensive making of the paper. Four hundred sheets of paper were formed, dried, and assembled. Few of the sheets were white. The color of the various sheets depended upon the color of the article of clothing that was destroyed and reborn for...
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The Read Book Red

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Been Red Book The past tense of read is read Pronounced the same As the color, red Today I begin a new practice I will mark read books as read As I read them I shall read a book Every two pages After I have read both pages I will draw upon the pages This will indicate the pages Have been read No more need of A bookmark Unread pages won’t be read I will make a read drawing Perhaps with scarlet paint Or crimson pencil. Red ink We shall see I walked to Sennelier where I Bought a red, a white, black And a charcoal Caran D’Arche I also purchased Two bottles of ink One blue, the other red I must read my book first Then we shall see What transpires Something will happen After read turns to read It may be Read will be blue
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Damp Books as Building Material

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Too Many Books There are too many books to read. Books remaindered. A flood of unopened books. In Venice a bookshop, known as Aqua Alta, uses books as building material. They at first loaded books into gondolas so that when the water in the canals rose and flooded the bookshop, the books would float in the boats. This was never going to work. The books got soaked. They had many ruined books. They stacked them next to the canal, to have them taken away. But no one would take them away. So, they stacked the books into a stairway you can go there and climb the book staircase and look down the narrow canal, to the right and to the left. Or you can pet the cats who sleep on top of the books when the light is just right. Damp books make poor building material. Neither wet nor dry are cats a reliable building material.
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No One Asked You to Paint

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No One Asked There is an oddness about Painting a very big canvas Especially one this large No one asked you to paint it Or, certainly they never Expected you To make it just that way It seems odd how such An adventure begins One in which you don’t know In advance where it Might lead you Yet here you are Unexpectedly spent And the paint Still needs to dry.
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Love is Not Blind

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Love in Reading Glasses Love isn't blind She generally needs her eyes to do the first round of sorting Later she puts on her glasses and reads the fine print visit Sandy Kinnee.com
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Who Made That Sculpture? Who Made That Lollipop?

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Old Forgotten Artists Artists live a short time. What they produce belongs to the time in which they create their best work. But, what is their best work? Why is it their best work? Does their best work gain a life of its own? I am in a building, in northern Paris where is stored an ocean of documents these papers do not attempt to answer questions of quality, popularity, endurance of cultural or social value, or immortality of the artist or artwork. It is simply a pile of contracts and letters between the individual artists who have received a commission to produce an artwork and the bureaucrat who made payment. It makes clear how much the artist was paid in total and how much time passed between installments. Almost always the artist has to plead for payment, even when payment is due. Countless artists are documented. Their names might otherwise be lost, as many of the artworks have joined their creators in oblivion. We are each such invisible figures w...
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Ode on a Paintbrush: Bright Sunny Colors

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Bright Sunny Colors My brushes dip themselves into brighter pools of paint and splash like they are having fun Bristles glued to the ends of sticks do the business of picking up and setting down color They have no concept of fun That heart that sends the hand to grasp and dip is the engine of happiness visit Sandy Kinnee.com
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On the Naming of Paintings

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On the Naming of Paintings You would think that that guy who writes poems would want to name each of his paintings (which are in fact visual poetry) with individual and interesting titles. Certainly Erato, the muse of erotic poetry might whisper a whole string of suggestions as she licks his ear but he has more or less silenced her except for that tiny bit about her tongue probing his ear. He has a particular muse in mind to assist in the naming of paintings She has yet to figure out how this might work visit Sandy Kinnee.com
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Looking for a Needle in a Haystack

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Looking for Needles It helps to know what a needle looks like, even if you don't know shit about sewing. Knowing what hay doesn't look like is another way to go about it.
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Off To Look Closely at Another Pollock

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Eyeball Adventure I am on a plane heading off alone to look at paintings in a museum It's not my job or if it is no one is paying me. I look because I can. A number of Jackson Pollock's paintings are on exhibit and I will do what I do and look for those stray anomalous drips Whether or not I find drips it is an eyeball adventure
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Slathering Pigment Without a Muse

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Slathering Pigment Without a Muse Creative people, painters especially, actually rarely claim to use that particular source of inspiration, known as a Muse. It just sounds either fanciful or sexual to claim to have a goddess poking or being poked. Historically, none of the Classical Muses were assigned the task of assisting painters, likely because painting was primarily representational and not abstract like music, dance, or poetry. Who would need inspiration to paint what is in front of ones eyes? How funny when the visual arts ventured away from rendering the three dimensional world and into abstract territory, the realm of music and poetry. New muses appeared, often in human form. One might list flesh and blood muses and the artists that they motivated. There are some who desire to stimulate creativity who willingly serve as muses. Others either resist or are not necessarily aware that they inspire. Yet, painting and writing and music do not necessitate the enga...
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The Boy Who Painted Blue Elephants

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The Boy Who Painted Blue Elephants He was an optimistic and hopeful young artist with buckets and buckets of promise. But at age 24 an ancient Roman elephant fell on him, breaking his only left leg and radically altering the remaining seventy-six years of his artistic career. From that day forward the focus of his paintings was the depiction of Evil and aggressive Elephants. Between 1971 and 1980 the elephant paintings were all limited to shades of blue. Art critics and historians suggested a link to Picasso’s “Blue Period.” However, the sad truth is he never really fancied and therefore did not want to emulate Pablo Picasso. Instead, the leg broken by the elephant event caused him to limp so severely that he veered toward the left. In the art supply store, where he purchased his supplies, colors were arranged with reds on the right side of the display and blues on the extreme left. No matter how much he might have wanted to buy a tube of cadmium red or yellow ochre, his l...
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The Turkey in the Basement

The Turkey in the Basement It was the one thing that kept him alive, otherwise my grandmother would have chopped his head off yesterday. He was a smart turkey. He had discovered a hiding place, under the kitchen, in a space that was never dug out when the basement was excavated. It was now a crawl space littered with turkey droppings, barely enough space for an escaped turkey, not enough for a grown man to slither into to trap a turkey. The gobbler my grandmother had been raising, unbeknownst to her grandson, had fled the coop. He was evading capture in the basement. How he had gotten there, I never learned. As I tell this tale, you might be tempted to hope the bird will become a folk hero or befriend some spider with a bizarre talent and perfect spelling. But no. This will not end well for the turkey. Today is the third Wednesday in November. We all know that by some magical and fragrant means, a delicious celebratory feast is due tomorrow, and the centerpiece is a golden ...
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Making Art Versus Having a Life: The Struggling Artist

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Finding the Time to Make Art I used to feel sorry for my friends in NYC who didn't have what you might call real paying jobs and had to scramble and scrape every day. These were the people who failed to take Richard Serra's advice to learn a well paying trade. He warned against working as a waiter or taxi driver and trying to make art. Those jobs devour your time, pay poorly, and leave you exhausted rather than inspired. Yet, they persevere, staying up late painting or writing. His suggestion was to be an independent skilled craftsman: a carpenter, electrician, plumber, or tile setter. The pay is very good and lets you "buy back" your time for the real work you have to do. Yet, somehow, those friends struggled on and made what art they could, working barely at minimum wage, and keeping their dream alive: to live in New York City and have the identity of "artist". They scramble and struggle. Many spend more time writing grant applications th...
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Sean Scully and Cats

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Sean Scully and Cats I have been watching SEAN SCULLY videos He really likes cats I think that this is true Artists are like cats Many identify with cats Artists do not seem to Identify with sheep or cattle Goats, maybe Alice Neal Said I reminded her of a cat
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How to Unscrew the Cap on an Old Paint Tube

Remembered Magic Trick I used to know a magic trick: How to open things that cannot be opened In particular dried watercolor paint tubes Screw caps welded in place decades ago The interior contents Long turned to jolly stones of brilliant color The trick still works: you light a match And slowly rotate the cap end Like a chicken on a spit and in no time The heat loosens the cement that had Frozen the cap into a permanently sealed condition The cap spins free and the pigments see the light of day I dip a saturated brush into the opened vault and A flood of Rip Van Winkle color awakens Onto a new white sheet Old magic tricks can still amaze me Remember the vanishing birds? Let's see if the salt trick still works visit Sandy Kinnee.com
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To Paint is to Practice the Activity of Applying Paint

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Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Robert Rauschenberg and Airports for Lights, Shadows, and [Dust] Particles To paint is to practice the activity of applying paint. Sometime past, long forgotten paint was applied to the interion walls of caves, on non-rectangular surfaces. It was not so much paint as we know it, yet it was pigment and a binder that kept the imagery from falling onto the cave floor. Perhaps we could call it proto-interior paint of a limited palate. Such marks were more magic than likeness, more story than illustration, predating text. If it was storytelling the audience was limited to those who might crawl into the non-right-angled cave gallery. Those marks in cave galleries applied paint left the cave, which as far as we know was the oldest surviving venue, due to the limited evidence, paint was applied to portable surfaces, some such as tanned skins. Samuel Clemmons helps Robert Rauschenberg to paint a canvas or More Tom Sawyer’s Fence Tale than Jon Cage’s Suggest...
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Superfluous "N"

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Superfluous "N" "Oh, the moon is shinning in the dinning room. the moon is shinning in the dinning room. What can we do with this moon that is shinning in the dinning room?" One too many letters in a word kept me from putting my thoughts and stories onto paper for more than thirty five years. I was just a visual artist and had proof that I should not play around with words. When I was in Junior College I had the misfortune to submit my first poem to the "creative writing" magazine, a mimeographed publication folded and bound with a pair of tandem staples in the gutter. I had not previously written anything outside of class work. This long lost poem was doubtless just the trite feelings of a young person poorly put onto paper, my first writing attempt. I was too sensitive to take any criticism, even constructive. So, when the faculty adviser of the publication asked to speak with me about my submission and proceeded to shred my poem, ...
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Listen With Your Eyes: The Barnes

I was going to call this: The Tale of the Grey Moleskin If ashes could talk, would they want to? There is certainly a good reason that whatever color an object may have been, its ash is usually grey. Charcoal is still an object, consumed or depleted of its energy. All that remains are ashes. I purchased a fresh pack of moleskin notebooks, three the color of ashes. Grey, that ash color, which does not assert itself in any way; that sits back and does the uniting while red, orange, and yellow show off. This grey notebook is polite and inert. Unlike the red moleskin, this one does not reveal a story, only provides a place to record one. This grey notebook is not a muse, and when I ask it to try, it says something that makes me tremble: "Think for yourself" . "Think for yourself" is probably the most powerful statement a true muse can whisper. Trust your vision, remember that dream and listen to yourself; all are key muse invective directives. ...
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Beautiful Hardwood Floor Destroyed

The Former Studio in Ohio My first painting studio Was in an apartment With oak floors I protected the wood with Plastic sheeting and A layer of masonite My muse failed to Warn me What might happen Hardwood studio floor Stained blue and green By accident Warped here and there More by water Than color Young artists Are not taught about This in Art school This is a post MFA Surprise bonus A free lesson visit Sandy Kinnee.com
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