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Kinnebrew Retrospective Catalogue

ADSUM      HOW, WHAT, AND WHY AN ARTISTS THINKS

Revised 2023

Book One (paperback only)

370 pages

Book Two (paperback only)

394 pages

This book is currently only available from Kinnebrew Studios

Note: copies ordered from Kinnebrew Studios are signed by the author.

$24.00 (each book)      Click to purchase

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Authors note:

These books were written for those who have a genuine interest in art. What we presently label “fine art” are the most enduring records of humans on earth. Artists are diarist, recording you and me, using these works we learn more about “us”. All the ideas, artifacts, time and events humans have ever created or been involved with are focused and concentrated and summarized in tyhe creations of interpretation. The language of art is far more reobust than the expressions we use every day. Metaphor, poetry and symbols is double speak of the soul.

What these books are about

‘Any distinguishable advance in technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

               Arthur B. Clark

“The same can be said of art.”

               Joseph E. Kinnebrew

It is about metamorphosis, not abrupt change; instead, a gradual awakening every bit as magical as the baby seeing through blurred light, into their new-found world. As magical as you’re reaching to take the baby’s outstretched hand. It is not about the potential artist as illusionist; it is about an artist’s real-life vision already in the works, visions that are, and those that will be. This is about Einstein’s gift of quanta or possibilities, qualia, and mysteries unfolding around us every moment. I have a passion for science. There are references in this book to innumerable things we are discovering in science. Of particular interest the brain and its importance to substantiating the artist’s uniqueness. This is how the human brain works, how my mind works because using fMRIs I have had a look at it functioning in real-time. In this book there are descriptions about the efforts of others who invented and created things that seem so second nature to us we no longer question them. Think axioms, perspective, and shadow.

As an artist, I am under a microscope in this book, a painter, sculptor, and now an aspiring writer. But other things as well, a person of curiosity with integrated interests. One who engages in our world outside the studio and into the company of other artists, most of whom I do not know well and most really not at all. Artists are often snobs for no reason, tedious and painfully conflicted. To an outsider, they can be uncommonly guarded of their souls. I am guilty of these things. I celebrate artists passion and importance in the mixture we call the human race, but I feel their reluctance when around others. Without artists, and what we have recorded for posterity, humanity might truly be condemned to repeat the mistakes of history. There would be incomplete records with little possibility for needed corrections. Artists are historians of a different sort, and they do not shy away from recording failures.

So how do artists think? Rilke said long ago, “You cannot understand the answers until you have lived into the questions.” Perhaps I have not yet lived long enough for answers; those I find are usually spring-boarded into continuing questions, like how fast do bacterium travel and do they walk, crawl, swim or run? (Actually, they are usually hijackers or hitchhikers.) Long ago, I gave up searching for such things as truth thinking as soon as I found them, with insistently imposed concepts of forever constant, they would be renegotiated, outdated, and irrelevant. There seems little choice but to look forward and guided each day by the quest of questioning.

This is how artists think. These written musings are a catharsis of sorts. After years of struggle, hard-fought battles, some successes, failures, and more questions, I am feeling freer today than ever before. Perhaps this book will help coming to terms with your questions as well as my own. Alas, not so, for the drama remains unfinished. Like many Italian operas, there is still bellowing on stage and in the wings. The fat lady has yet to sing and send us all fleeing back into the streets of mythological desires.

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Author’s disclosure and comment

To prepare, organize, and research this book, I relied on the essential quality of artist as “aggregator.” I have read, listened, and looked at thoughts, ideas, and creations of many who herein go unnamed. Having acknowledged this, I wish to pay homage to them as a group and credit a few with my education and opinions (not necessarily connected).

In this book, by rearranging and juxtaposing elements in different order, I intend to present a bridge of understanding, not for artists but rather for those who wonder and care about them and the incredible things artists create. Inherent in the creative process is provocative mystery about what we as artists do and questions others have about such rare unusual people. And then, of course, just how much is authentically original? This is always debatable for we stand on the shoulders of giants and of course, all humanity. Such rearrangements and aggregations do not, to my mind, diminish the product but instead enriches our perspective and promotes continuing creative thought. The tower of our existence grows ever higher.

Nay Sayers play fast and loose with what they term the appropriation or outright plagiarism of others, ignoring the notion that claimed and so-called original is itself, more often than not, the same process of prior inventions and attributions. If I have failed to satisfy rules of credits and attribution this has not been intentional, but rather to stay on mission without adding greater complexity and book-length… hence there are no footnotes in these two volumes.

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Preface

“It is art, and not science, this is the means by which we express what we see on the inside of the outside. Painting, in this respect, is closest to reality…”

              Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) Beyond the myth of realism.

I have assumed or inferred we are all starting, more or less, from the same place, with the same or similar information. Not true when I am making art and now not correct when writing about it. The problem is, if you are unfamiliar with some of the references, their double and multiple possibilities, you may not be able to fill in the gaps. It is a dangerous assumption with possibilities on my part. For those who require in some cases evidence and explanations have become lengthy.

So, let me say it differently, to begin art is an intensely intellectual exercise, unique because it has, with a license granted to few, compounded results using exceptional creativity, usually in language unfamiliar to those on the outside. Dictionaries are helpful but far from the last “word.”

A reader may wonder why the science, the politics, the religion, the philosophy? Why, why, why? Why not just art, particularly fine art, however, it is just the art… and hence, many things for all people. Creativity does not originate in a vacuum; it is prompted and nurtured by time, events, and a biological imperative. Each artist is unique and reflects their deeply personal vision, which is then added to the grand collective. In this book, you read reflections that are mine alone but in company. Observations about who I am, my work, and that of others. This is the sum of How, What, and Why, Artists Think. Remember this when the subjects seem to stray away from art. Artists are looking and considering everything, they can lay their eyes and minds on.

Only one thing in this book is new; everything else has been known for some time (the question is by whom). What is original and new are the rearrangements, juxtapositions, assayed, and essayed items of interest. This is what artists do, I/we/they select bits and pieces having to do with benefits, interests, and intentions, we then present them in a personally determined order. Arrangements and order usually unlike that of most other people’s choice. In this respect, artists are unlike most people and yes, as a group they are confirmed to have been built differently. Persistent, we are passionate, and we are perplexing. Having seen and experienced art as the predicate to life, we place little value in answers and instead treasure the questions. What is not understood by most is while recording today, true artists are visionaries casting shadows, creating images today of tomorrow. Alas, traits, and evidence are present in the works of those who are fine artists, so perhaps they are more pure and unique forms (lest I say enduring) of the creativity we celebrate.

Artists confuse others because we (artists) often do not understand the confusion, the judgments and rejections that are, at times, confusing to people who do not see what we see or how we see them. In short, artists can be very self-absorbed. As autodidact polymaths, when warranted (our decision), some of us (artists) learn or are aware of greater depth, much of it considered inconsequential to others as they rush on to toward the demise of us all.

By definition, much of this book is opinion, my opinions, and they are here to color in a background of how words and art reflect the world we see and interact with. When you disagree with “opinions,” you have done so amidst the background of your own experience. I expect this and welcome it. Friction creates heat and wear but is usually evidence of activity, and if properly maintained, often productivity.

There are many choices of media. Here I selected words rather than those usually associated with my work in painting, sculpture, and the etcetera. Doing this because now words seem most appropriate. Now because too often subtly the nuance of metaphor is not translated well. When looking at the army of oeuvres there are far more choices than most assume.

A note about optimism and disagreement with the term AI, specifically the word artificial; it is an absurdity we should assume any form of intelligence other than our own is, by definition artificial and therefore cursed with the notion of illegitimacy. This concept of disagreement also applies to art. We are, like all things, evidence of change, and must continuously update and come to terms with that. Fine art has always embodied this idea.

Joseph Kinnebrew

Blaine, Washington 2023