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Many Ways to Skin a Cat

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The Subject is Paper, Not Cat Skinning I don’t actually chase my cat around with the vacuum cleaner, but in a manner of speaking I do. I love my big black cat. However he sheds fur. It is the gathering of this fur, dust, breadcrumbs, lint, dry skin, gray human hair, popcorn, and additional random detritus that led me, upon emptying to the vacuum cleaner bag, to both imagine my cat being gathered in bits and pieces as well as my personal history with turning scraps of nothing into wonderful sheets of paper. Your name and contribution will come later. My cat’s name is Puck. Later on in this narrative I will use the phrase: “There are many ways to skin a cat”. I love my cat and generally that phrase is offensive, but being a common expression, I will use it. Historically, paper has been around as long as I can remember. I have memories of drawing upon sheets of paper as far back as the early 1950s, although there are those who insist paper existed even prior to my birth i...
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Her Lucca Studio

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Her Lucca Studio One of my aunt Mary’s so-called failings was in her lack of dates and titles or locations On her paintings this canvas an exception 1962 it reads a view from her Lucca studio Across the flood plane of the Serchio bathed in crisp Tuscan morning sunlight 1962 seemed light filled until it wasn’t she crated her paintings sailed home After that November funeral exporting her own paintings back to the states a legal snarl This oil on canvas image bright and airy catches handfuls of promise and light It hangs in my daughter’s living room close to Lake Harriet far from Italy and 1962 Mary O'Hare oil on canvas 1962
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Tiny Rowboat

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My dad built a wooden boat for me when I was five or six. My brother, Tom, and I loved this boat. It was a scaled down version of a standard rowboat. There may or may not be a photograph of us standing next to the boat. Much of my life was spent on the shore of Lake Huron. At that time we actually lived right on the beach but were discouraged by our mother from going into the water without permission. Dad apparently had said nothing about the boat to mom. He built it and gave it to us without her knowledge. He also had grown up on the lake and had always wanted a boat, so why not live vicariously through his boys? I should point out that my father was no older than 27. Mom was 25. As young parents they did not seem to worry about what could go wrong if two little boys dragged the boat, of which my mother still was unaware, down to the water and pushed out into deep water. Dad was at work. Mom was ironing sheets when she noticed the unnatural silence. She called our ...
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Plein Air: On the Painting of Trees

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Plein Air Painting This was their form of Creation: My aunt Mary made her living painting portraits. My Grandmother Rose baked bread and pies. Mary was my mother’s eldest sister, a professional artist, and my role model. Mary, when she did not have a commission, found other things that kept her at the easel: often still lifes and plein air landscapes. Rose was my father’s mom. Her creativity was edible. Until last night I had never thought of Grandma Rose in terms of Art. But, she also painted trees. Each and every tree trunk in her yard: white from the ground upward six feet. Exactly six feet. Without a yardstick. (Conceptual Art in my head alone)
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If You Want Something Done Right: Paint the Basement Wall

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Just Paint the Wall His father gave him an important task, one he knew his ten-year-old son could handle. Apply a coat of primer to the wall in the basement. The boy had helped his dad paint before, just a little. This would be his first solo paint job. But even if he messed up it was in the basement and not really noticeable. The boy would be at home, it was summer recess. Usually, he and his friends would do something together, such as go down to the river and catch frogs or go play home run derby with whiffle balls in the vacant yard adjacent to where the cranky old man lived. The boys had learned the hard way that the old man would not return their baseball if it landed in his yard. In June, the geezer kept a foul ball that accidently busted his dining room window as he was darning socks. Whiffle balls do not break windows. Today was not a day for frogs or home run derby. The weatherman forecast rain, rain, rain. Could he invite his friends over? They could play with th...
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Three Portraits Two Finished

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Three Portraits Two Finished My aunt Mary painted my portrait at age six again at 21 for a lithograph and wanted to paint my portrait as an old man She said “ Come back and sit for me one more time ” I put it off and now it is too late But, seriously, I can’t sit still for long for any reason: I have my own painting to do
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Boats to Sail Away On

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Boats To Sail Away Upon He joined the Navy He’d grown up next to the lake It seemed natural He wanted to sail the world Took a train to Chicago A bus to Oklahoma He somehow made it To San Diego and saw The surf wasn’t like the lake Still he wanted to sail the Seven seas and projected His dreams on me When I won another Boy Scout Merit badge he said: I could be a Naval officer I should go to Annapolis Be an man in a starched Suit saluted all day Dad, they don’t need artists In the Navy, sure, I could Sit on deck and paint Watercolors all day, I’d never run out of water. Forget that saluting. But I will tell you something: My boats won’t be thick steel Painted battleship grey I will ride a ship with blue sails And sit by a boat basin And watch sailboats all day And if you want I’ll write a story about you falling out of a boat. It will make you smile. (for my dad, on his birthday)
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Farming in the Nude: Naked Farmers on Tractors

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Naked Farmers On Tractors Farming in the nude became a local fad after old mister Kuharchik bent over behind his big, red McCormick, while it was still idling. He attempted to clear away something that had wrapped around the PTO, the slowly spinning rod that supplied power from the tractor to the brush hog. He'd been farming his entire life and was well aware of the safety rules written for city slickers. Rule number one: turn off the dang thing before tinkering with spinning parts. Turning equipment off and back on again was a complete waste of time, he always said. Being it was a spring morning he wore a jeans jacket over the same red flannel shirt he'd pulled over his head, to avoid buttoning or unbuttoning it, that he'd worn every single day for the past month. His wife refused to allow him inside with that shirt, which she claimed should be fed to the pigs. In reaching down to remove the tangled mass of knotted weeds that was spinning slowly around the p...
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Persistently Painting Anyway

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Persistence Anyway If you need to know something, anything, Ask someone online They will surely have some sort of answer Probably disappointing I sent an email to a friend who as far as I know never showed her work She said only 4% of artists sell their art And usually that dries up She has an MFA and publishes art by others So she should know In her opinion few of that 4% have shelf-life Beyond ten years Perhaps there is a following each of this 4% Gathers as supporters Then, in time they all age and that audience Ages in the usual way Which is to say they die just as the 4% artist Will as well Frankly, isn’t 4% a bit overblown a number Better odds than the Lottery This put me into a gloomy mood and there is Little else I can do Except to head back to the studio and paint For the person I always delight visit Sandy Kinnee.com
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A Couple of Artists Looking at the Same Thing

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Two Very Old Artists Looking at the Same Thing I watched as two older artists talked about that thing called painting One said she was amazed at how the paint hopped from her bucket onto the canvas dripping this way or that as it would Surprising her the next day by how it had dried She said she never wanted to be a famous artist just a really great one that let the paint do the work while she took the credit The other artist spoke of rolling paint over slippery glue Dictating situations in which the paint would dry into chance patterns Nudging chaos in lovely and mysterious ways Surprising him the next day by how it had dried He said he never wanted to be a famous artist just a really great one that let the paint do the work while he took the credit I watch these older artists talk about this activity this phenomenon called painting This fixing of paint to canvas into shapes and forms regardless of the excuse of which or whom is in control of how the pain...
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Back to Pollock's Over Splatter

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Over-Splatter and Photographic Support While the concept of using splotches and drips, on front and backs of Jackson Pollock’s painting, to ascertain the sequence of creation may seem intuitive at best, photographic evidence supports the veracity of the over-splatter tool. Three specific paintings photographed during their sequential creation provide a baseline that makes clear the numbering method used to assign inventory control is clearly not an indicator of sequence. Both photographic evidence offered by the Namuth images and examination of over-splatter establish the following order of creation. The numbers assigned to the paintings by Parsons are 30, 31, 32. 30 is the MoMA (Number One) painting, 31 belongs to the MET (Autumn Rhythm), and 32 is in Dusseldorf. Not only is it irrefutable in the Namuth images, but supported by the over-splatter on the completed works that the order in which these three artworks were painted is: 31, followed by 30, and lastly 32. Since...
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Punching the Time Clock: Punching Out

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Punching In I watched an old movie that took place many years ago. It was before my time, save one familiar element: workers punching in for work, out for lunch, back in after lunch, then back out at the end of the day. The sound of a time stamp on an hourly worker’s time stub. Pick up your timecard from the OUT board, Punch In, Place the card on the IN board. Pick up your card from the IN board, Punch Out, place it in the OUT board. Punch In, Punch Out, Punch In, Punch Out, Punch In, Punch Out, Punch In, Punch Out. It was what hourly workers did to get paid. The checks were always a week later. They weren’t very much, after the deductions. But it was money. Spent already. I recall that the purpose of timecards was to keep a worker honest. There were ways around it, such as punching a friend’s card for them, giving them more hours than they really logged. But never mind that. Making minimum wage and punching a card seemed somehow humiliating. It was just the way it ...
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Learning Patience

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The Patience Teacher The largest issue I always have Is waiting for the paint to dry Large canvas or small panel The paint knows only to dry At the same rate Always teaching me patience One day I will learn visit Sandy Kinnee.com
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Looking closely at Jackson Pollock’s 1953 painting: The Deep

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Pollock’s The Deep Staple gunned canvas Plenty of bristles Forever floating In a vanilla Milkshake sea Protected long After Jackson’s Death by a polished Aluminum Kulicke frame Likely welded by So-called minor Artist Robert Kulicke Himself Pollock makes It obvious He is painting Not on the floor With a stick Using a bargain House painters Brush for Do it yourselfers Horse hairs shed Everywhere Deliver an overt Message: "I can Paint also With a brush" Looking closely at Jackson Pollock’s 1953 painting: The Deep In the collection of the Centre Pompidou. visit Sandy Kinnee.com
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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 his late work. I, unfortunately, remember no details of the conversation except that neither one of us cared much for Picasso’s late work. I believe Greenberg 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 particula...
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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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"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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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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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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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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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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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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The Shadow of a Rabbit in a Clump of Carrots

A Celestial Ceiling of Rorschach Something in the wiring of our brains makes us look for patterns. We need to recognize our surroundings and identify experiences. Familiarity breeds comfort as well as contempt. But we seek comfort first. Comfort comes once we find our bearings. Contempt is a luxury. To find our place in the universe we examine and mark and lay claim to those things we can hold. Some of this claiming and marking is physical. Other knowledge is held in the eyes and mind. We impose patterns to reveal the rhythms beyond them. We look to the clouds, scan the stars, stare at paint stains, listen to repetitions, we look at random and fixed items and seek for reference points. We want the world to make sense to us. If something isn’t ordered if something isn’t clearly organized, we organize it. Intently searching the stars, we construct constellations. We gather colored sand and arrange it on a board, forming a mandela. We are organizers. What can be ...
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Visiting Monet's Giverny Far Too Early

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Going to Monet's Garden Too Soon I grew up with an ingrained sense that flowers must be grown. No matter where I lived I would plant what I knew best: marigolds, cosmos, bachelor buttons, and any of the various fall bulbs. Daffodils were my lifelong favorites. If I didn't have space, I'd go back to my parents house and plant something. In the late 70's I'd heard that Monet's garden at Giverny were being reclaimed. In 1979 I was working at Stanley Hayter's "Atelier 17" in Paris and decided to visit the garden with my wife, Gale Murray, and two Canadians. We found the location of the gardens and plotted our trip via the train to Vernon and received directions that Giverny was only 5 kilometers away. We had prepared the typical French d'jeunier: a baguette, a hunk of Caprice de Dieux, Jambon, tomats, vin, Volvic, some cornishons, and a selection of tartlettes. Our plan was to eat our lunch in the garden. The weather was hot and sunny;...
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