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

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...

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

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

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.

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

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...

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...