The last few days have been music to my eyes, mostly because of a couple of young artists who sing with their paints. Artists you should know about.

It all started when I got an e-mail from my mother-in-law, forwarding along a link she had received from her brother that turned out to be a blog created by his son. Most blogs are made up almost entirely of words but with a picture here and there. This blog is quite the opposite, consisting almost entirely of fairly high quality images of very high quality original art.

Now those of you who are quick with the whole "neighbor's nephew's sister-in-law's third cousin's best friend" thing will have figured out that the artist of which I speak is actually my wife's cousin, and therefore mine by marriage. And you may also think you have figured out that the reason I speak well of his art is because of this familial relationship. Au contraire, say I, and I say it with gusto.

I admit to a bias here and there, but when it comes to praising work simply because I know and like the person who created it, I draw the line pretty firmly. Where would I be as an honest assessor of words and music and performance if I allowed myself to be swayed by affection or admiration? The truth is that I deeply and genuinely like many of the artists with whom I work, but if their work requires the hard truth I deliver it.

And so it is with young Mr. Kitch (aka Dallas Teague, a name that pays homage to Donald Teague, the artist's late maternal grandfather, who was himself a world-class artist and whose paintings you can still buy today, assuming you are on good terms with your banker).

So mosey on over to his blog, admire his work, and remember that you heard about him here first. He is already excellent, and as he continues to paint and mature and be less distracted by homework (a joke you will only get if you look at his pictures), he will get better and better.

As for the second young artist, who is really, really young (12, I think, putting her a little more than a decade behind Bryan), you may have already heard of her. She's good enough and famous enough already to have stopped using her last name and be billed simply as Akiane (pronounced ah-KEE-ah-nah). And I'm willing to give her that, because she is truly a phenom.

She has, after all, been on Oprah (So has my brother, but that's a story for another time.), major newspapers around the world have printed stories about her, major magazines have done the same, there are video interviews of her on YouTube, and now I'm blogging about her. What more could be required to get her to the very top?

You may be skeptical when you look at her art and read what she has written, because it doesn't seem possible that one so young could do work that is so mature, so beyond her age. She has an answer for you: God. And that's an answer that is hard to argue with, especially when she says it and when you look at her work.

I'll write more about Akiane later, and perhaps more about Bryan, but for now let me point you to a song I wrote with Steve Eaton a few years ago that talks about "inspired" art. Go to the Do Good Music MySpace page and the song Living In The River should start playing automatically. Listen to the words, and then, like Bryan and Akiane, start living in the river.