I'm Visibly Green

Artists. I am in awe, as always, when I see someone with a natural artistic ability. I quite happily spend hours wandering a gallery, lost in my imagination. Forget the pretentiousness of whether the piece speaks of a "multi-dimensional consciousness where the mind is conceiving a point where it will be free from the body to transcend immersions into the parameters of the delphic hallucination" (yes , I read this somewhere would you believe, but I wish I could remember which artist it was). I just know what I like and I likes what I likes - it's as simple as that.

On a smaller, but no less important scale, it's always great to see a wonderful new book cover. I may be shallow but there has been many a time I've purchased a book just on the cover alone. (this may be one of the many reasons why I avoid Changeling). We know K.Z. Snow has sold her soul to the Cover Gods and tomorrow's release of Visible Friend just proves this.

Isn't this just one of the most stunning covers you've ever seen? Yet another Anne Cain winner.

(See below for a chance to win a copy of this release)

Aside from Anne Cain's wonderful photographic covers, there are also artists producing some great individual pieces too - P.L. Nunn, Andreas Bell, Dan Skinner, Nathie, the list goes on. 

This painting is by Paul Richmond

He painted it aged 14. 14! Jeez. See this and many others at You Will Rise -

The You Will Rise Project was started by Linda Regula and Paul Richmond, two artists who were bullied as kids and who now use their visual voices to speak out about this horrific issue.

Why I Am Not a Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.

Why? I think I would rather be

a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg

is starting a painting. I drop in.

"Sit down and have a drink" he

says. I drink; we drink. I look

up. "You have SARDINES in it."

"Yes, it needed something there."

"Oh." I go and the days go by

and I drop in again. The painting

is going on, and I go, and the days

go by. I drop in. The painting is 

finished. "Where's SARDINES?"

All that's left is just

letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of

a color: orange. I write a line

about orange. Pretty soon it is a 

whole page of words, not lines.

Then another page. There should be

so much more, not of orange, of

words, of how terrible orange is

and life. Days go by. It is even in

prose, I am a real poet. My poem

is finished and I haven't mentioned

orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call

it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery

I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

Frank O'Hara (1971)

Michael Goldberg, Sardines (1955)

To win a copy of K.Z. Snow's Visible Friend, leave a comment to let us know your favourite cover author. Usual rules apply and draw will be made on Friday 29th April at 6pm EST.