All My Blog Posts

Writing about my many names in a previous post, reminded me of the dark time that I changed my first name. This is the humiliating story, written in dialogue form, of the day I went to court to change my name. I was 31 at the time.

In part, this is the story of a black man from the South, who moved to NY, earned 3 doctorates and then moved to middle America. He is an unsung hero and genius that needs his story told to the world. I wrote this in 2017 on Martin Luther King Jr’s Memorial Holiday (several years before the beginning of the "Black Lives Matter" movement of the 2020.)

4040 Farmouth Drive, Los Feliz & its architect & builder, my grandfather, Harry Hammond Keith, an extraordinary person, who otherwise few people may never know. 

Recalling high school for some people is like reliving their “glory days.” For me, it was one of the worst times of my life, not that anyone knew that at the time. 

A journal entry written in 1996 while creating a piece of art during the time I was also going through a divorce.  It began with an assignment given through a summer Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE) course through the Getty Art Institute in Los Angeles. It reflects my feelings towards art (in 1996) and shows how the art-making process can delve deep into one’s psyche to express the true emotions one might otherwise not have the courage or words to communicate.

My thoughts on the debate on whether to replace the name of my alma mater, John Marshall High School, in Los Angeles, CA

I paint intimate, nature-soaked soul-sanctuaries where dreamlike beauty holds space for quiet reflection, inner transformation, and the coexistence of unruly, passionate emotion. My work invites viewers into quiet, contemplative spaces—gardens, waterscapes, and open impressionistic and abstracted dreamscapes—where the gentle and the wild live side by side inside the same moment. In these paintings, I’m always searching for that tender threshold where solace, longing, and unta

I'm abysmal at perspective.... have studied, practiced it, even taught it, and I can spot it immediately in my students' paintings, but never my own until later. I am and will always be about feelings, color, light, and mood, so much so, that I'll rush to express those while overlooking the most basic of technical elements. Alas! Remember that Cezanne and VanGogh had TERRIBLE perspective in their works too. I'm calling my style fauvism masquerading as realistic impressionism.

It has taken what seems like a lifetime to find my voice as an artist. Does that mean I can finally call myself an artist without feeling like an absolute fraud? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not, but it actually doesn't matter to me any more either. I just AM. Call me what you want, or at worst, say that I have the true heart of an artist if nothing else!

“Aikens’ Silverlake Manor-Previously Vande Kamps” Watercolor & ink. © 2023 Linnie Aikens Lindsay This post is a bit of Silver Lake history for you nostalgia buffs. First of all, it was written Silverlake for most of our lives, so I am sticking with that, since it took its name from the adjacent Silver Lake Reservoir, which sounded kind of redundant to many of the early homeowners, then and now, especially since it wasn't technically a lake! The n

The Songs, “Feelin’ Groovy,” “Peace Train,”“Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” and "Jesus Christ Superstar" are the songs that sum up these years for me.  I was lucky enough to have been raised during the years when Woodstock rocked and thrummed through our culture and the spirit of flower power wove itself like daisy garlands through the era.

Yes, I took a stab at it.  I lived at the beach.  It would have been a sin to let such an opportunity…or challenge pass me by, but I certainly wasn’t going to do it with an audience of friends from college! They all kept telling me I would be really good at it because I was a gymnast and had good balance. Maybe so, but I had to learn to swim first, didn’t I?

It may not have been a soccer ball, but Wilson was without equal on Squirrel Island.  Squirrel Island was our last night of a 150-mile expedition kayaking trip in Prince William Sound in Alaska.

This story could be labeled Part 2 in the dumb stuff young people do (or at least, I did), who think we are invincible or somehow know all the answers in our early 20’s.

Lest anyone accuse me of romanticizing my life or being somehow blind to my own faults, I share this embarrassing tale of the dumb stuff we do as young adults...this one a backpacking trip alone in the Sierras at 21.

I had a love-hate relationship with hiking... Sierra Symphonies tells of a annual 2 week backpacking trip I did with my family when I was young.

Most of us kids born in the 50's and 60's constantly heard these words from our parents. Digital toys were simply not even a figment of one's imagination back then. We played outside. We used our imaginations and figured out how to entertain ourselves.

In the late 1960’s, they called it the “Kool-Aid Fountain” for the alternating pastel colored waters of the Mulholland Fountain near the entrance to Griffith Park.

“Head out, girls,” were Dad’s predictable words each time we began a hike.  I think I had hiked every inch of the 53 miles of trails in Griffith Park, all before I was 14.

This story comes from my college days. One of my on campus jobs was working "Mud Crew," which was our colloquialism for the landscaping crew, as opposed to "Crud Crew," the name we'd given the custodial team at the college.