Tell me, muse, of the artist who

The stereo randomly picks from a thousand songs, and is still completely unable to find my mood.

“Daddy can you dry me off?”
“Are you done with your bath?”
“She thinks she saw an ant in there.”
“I did.”
“I looked, it was soap.”
I think about the possibility of black specks of “soap” floating in the tub.

There is this strange feeling in the bottom of my throat. It feels like thirst, but cannot be quenched by a half dozen glasses of water. I take the towel and dry her off.

“Thanks Daddy.”

You know I ever loved but four women in my life, my mother, my sister, my kitty cat, and my wife.

Feelings of inadequacy have no voice.
They are the silent submissions in the dark of my soul.
They are the yearning to sit quietly on crushed velvet and cry.
They are overcome in action.

Long narrow stripes of cobalt blue run down the surface of the canvas.

“I am not fighting with my sister. I was just using her brush.”

The canvas twists and turns beneath the brush, edges that should be smooth are rough. The light is harsh, playing tricks on the senses. Like a siren whose song leads sailors to their death, so the light leads the artist to think first one shade then another will bring revelation till everything is lost in an oblivion of color

Blue is evocative, full of sorrow and sexuality (The blue spot shown down on the burlesque dancer as she silently glided into the most erotic part of her dance.) Rain falls from the blue sky down into the deep blue ocean. All my thoughts are of this blue, and yet, the color is but a mask of somethings deeper. A thought perhaps, still in seed-form, wrapped in a cocoon of emotion, yearning to burst free.

There is no muse of painting. Vermeer thought it was the muse of history, while Hogarth the muse of comedy. The muses, I suppose, can inspire a painter to any of their vocations. Painters partake in the inspiration of all the muses, though they are not the only artists to do so. For while the muses may be associated with poetry or song, they are the goddesses of inspiration the spirits of creation, and thus speak to all.

I got the Blues so bad one day it put my face in a permanent frown, but I’m feeling so much better I’m gonna cake walk in to town.

A single red line is drawn along the edge. It is suffering and it is love. The eye hovers for a moment, then plunges headlong into the abyss.