Joseph Kinnebrew

ABOUT

Kinnebrew continues creating new innovative works of art, writing, inventing,and creating technical innovations. His wife Ellen managed most of his career inside and outside the studio. For 25 years she operated a gallery showing only his work and represented his work domestically and internationally to private collectors, museums, and corporations. With his unusually diverse interests and abilities there were years of challenges. Shortly before her death in 2004 she told an interviewer it was a wonderful life.

Kinnebrew has been a subject of study by experts in fields exploring unusual creativity and although he has  advanced degrees, he’s been classified an exceptional autodidact/polymath. His work includes design and mechanical patents, work in theoretical mathematics (structural systems) as well as the more generally familiar work in painting, sculpture, drawing, multi-media, and printmaking. He has completed monumental scale commissioned work in many locations.

Today, nearing eighty, he leads an active but solitary life focusing on his writing, studio creations, gardening,  and his collections of birds. He rarely lectures or appears in public anymore, saying he prefers to create alone and be with his partner Siri, soul mate and confidant. Gone are the days of assistants, international travel, and public appearances. Instead, he indulges himself,  as the introvert he has always been, but rarely able to be when there were demands and requirements for a more public person.

The late senior art critic of the New York Times, Wm Zimmer, referred to him and his work as “the 800-pound gorilla impossible to ignore.” Although he would not agree, others who are well qualified repeatedly say he is a surprisingly reluctant creative genius.