Cooper’s Hawk in Mesquite Tree — Painting by kenne
— Bob Kuhn (Wildlife Artist, One of the Tucson 7)
Pablo Picasso. “The Old Guitarist,” Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection.
© 2018 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
I
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, “You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.”
The man replied, “Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.”
And they said then, “But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are.”
II
I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.
I sing a hero’d head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,
Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.
If to serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,
Say that it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.
III
Ah, but to play man number one,
To drive the dagger in his heart,
To lay his brain upon the board
And pick the acrid colors out,
To nail his thought across the door,
Its wings spread wide to rain and snow,
To strike his living hi and ho,
To tick it, tock it, turn it true,
To bang it from a savage blue,
Jangling the metal of the strings…
— from Man With The Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens
Source: Transforming Vision; Writers On Art — Edward Hirsch
Watercolor Painting of a Greater Roadrunner — Photo-Artistry by kenne
He visits each day
A nosey kind of joker
Looking for trouble.
— kenne
Eastern Bluebird Sitting On The Fence — Painting by kenne
— Henry David Thoreau
Rainbow Painting (House of Sky) by kenne
— kenne
Centerpiece Painting by kenne
Cactus Blossom Art by kenne
I feel that a real living form is the natural result
of the individual’s effort to create the living thing
out of the adventure of his spirit into the unknown
— where it has experienced something — felt something —
it has not understood — and from that experience
comes the desire to make the unknown — known —
Making the unknown — known — in terms of one’s medium
is all absorbing — if you stop to think of form — as form
you are lost — The artist’s form must be inevitable —
You mustn’t think you won’t succeed —
— Georgia O’Keeffe
Sailboat In The Bay — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Sailboat
Strange flight, the body
Held at a threshold
And never quite freed
Or quite revealed—
One wing taut with wind,
One wing concealed
Until the wind grows calm
And it shimmers in a shadow-world,
The shape of a sail, yet softer—
The drifting boat
A bird half in air,
Half in water.
— Heather Allen, from Leaving a Shadow
Canyon Painting — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— Susan Sontag
Watercolor Painting by Katie Turner Bailey
Photo-Artistry by kenne
To Make Soft . . .
— kenne
“The Hunters In the Snow,” oil painting on wood by Pieter Bruegel
This work of Pieter Bruegel is a favorite of many people, but most know of his paintings only because of this one, “Hunters in the Snow,” a scene appearing on many Christmas cards. His paintings are beautiful because of his compositions make one of the opposites, based on Eli Siegel’s principle of aesthetic realism: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making of one of the opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”
opposites are one
— kenne
* * * * *— from “The Dark That Was Is Here” by Eli Siegel
This song is a train song
It’s a song about a train
Not the Atchison and Topeka
Not the Chattanooga Choo-Choo
Nor the one that leaves at midnight
For the state of Alabam’
This song is a train song
Where the engineer is Uncle Sam
Here comes the Freedom Train!
You better hurry down
Just like a Paul Revere
It’s comin’ into your hometown
Inside the Freedom Train
You will find a precious freight
Those words of liberty
The documents that made us great
You can shout your anger from a steeple
You can shoot the system full of holes
You can always question “We the People”
You can get your answer at the polls
That’s how it’s always been
And how it will remain
As long as all of us
Keep riding on the Freedom Train
Riding’ all across this country
Playing music for the people
With the fellows in the band
We’re singin’ of the liberty
And freedom through the land
You can write the President a letter
You can even tell him to his face
If you think that you can do it better
Get the votes and you can take his place
If you hate the laws that you’re obeying
You can shout your anger to the crowd
We may disagree with what you’re saying
But we’ll fight to let you say it loud
That’s how it’s always been
And how it must remain
As long as all of us
Keep riding on the Freedom Train
Keep ridin’ that Freedom Train!
— Maria Muldaur
The Freedom Song — Maria Muldaur
Bee On Camphorweed — A Taste of Fall Photo-Artistry by kenne
―
Sonoran Desert Painting — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— kenne
Becoming is Superior to Being 