Joan Miro

"I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music."

— Joan Miro

Spanish Artist

1893 - 1993

Hand Catching a Bird
(1968)

Our lives are touched with color whether we are artists or not.  We are attracted to color and repulsed by color.  We wake to color in the morning and some of us dream in color.  We love the color of flowers in spring and summer.  We love the color of leaves in autumn.  Our lives our filled with color.  We often buy our clothes based on color.  We paint the walls of our houses with color.  We choose the color of the car we buy.  Color is an important part of our lives.  Chefs use color to make the meal appealing.  Advertisers use color to convince us to buy things.

In a study of the colors blue and red, scientists at the University of British Columbia discovered that red makes us more cautious and attentive to details while blue makes us more creative and receptive to new ideas.  Experiments showed that with a red background people performed as much as 31 percent better on tasks like proofreading.  When blue was used, people were more open to new ideas and creative solutions.

What are your favorite colors?  Do some colors make you happy?  What colors make you sad? What colors excite you?  How does color shape your art?  What colors are you attracted to in a painting?  How does color shape your writing?  Do you use color as part of your description?  How does color affect your music?  

Red Sun

Irving Stone

"Art is a staple, like bread or wine or a warm coat in winter.  Man's spirit grows hungry for art in the same way his stomach growls for food."

— Irving Stone

American Novelist

1903 - 1989

Lust for Life
A novel about the life
of Vincent Van Gogh

Many people treat the creative spirit as a luxury, something that is not needed to live life.  And they are quite wrong.  Creativity is a crucial part of living.  If I did not have an outlet for my creativity, I would either go crazy or die.  Creativity is at the very core of who I am.  If I go too long without writing, without putting words on paper, I begin to feel a hunger growing inside me.  I have a strong need to create, to produce something either through writing or painting.  It is as important to my life as water, air, food, shelter and companionship.  Without it my spirit would shrivel and die.  We need food for the body and food for the spirit.  Creativity provides the food for the spirit.

Here are scenes from the movie, Lust for Life, based on the novel by Irving Stone.

Paulo Coelho

"We must never stop dreaming.  Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body."

— Paulo Coelho

Brazilian Novelist

1947 -

What are your dreams?  What would you like to do?  Where would you like to go?  What places would you like to visit?  I would love to visit China because of the history and the past civilizations.  I want to Japan because of my interest in haiku.  I want to visit Peru because of the Inca civilization.  I have traveled to 45 of the 50 states in the United States.  I have been fortunate to step foot on the soil of Jamaica, Canada and Mexico.  For me as a creative leader, visits to other places stir my imagination and allow me to see the world in new ways.  Again, I ask what are your dreams?  Are you feeding your soul?  Do your dreams give you nourishment?

Salvador Dali

"At the age of six I wanted to be a cook.  At seven I wanted to be Napoleon.  And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since."

— Salvador Dali

1904 - 1989

What did you want to be at age six?  I spent the first eight years of my life on a farm.  My first memory of being interested in a career was when I was in junior high.  I wanted to be an architect.  When I was a sophomore in high school I decided to be a preacher.  And the funny thing is that for the last twenty plus years I have been a professional speaker.  People will come up to me after I have spoken and say that I have missed my calling.  "You should have been a preacher," they say.  I smile and thank them.  I have learned that in some ways I am a preacher.  I am also a farmer and maybe to a certain extent an architect.  I plant seeds of hope in people's hearts.  I build up their self-esteem and help them rebuild their faith in themselves.  What did you want to be growing up?

Barry Lopez

"The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them.  If stories come to you, care for them and learn to give them away where they are needed.  Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other's memories."

— Barry Lopez

American Writer

1945 -

Do you care for the stories in and about your life?  Stories are the memories of who we are and where we have gone.  Stories remind us of what is important and what we want to remember.  Do you take care of your family stories, those tales that create the collective you?  Each time I share a story I am giving a piece of myself away.

One of those stories that circulated in my family was the time when I was six or seven and lived on a farm. My father was working the second shift at a factory because the farm did not give us enough money to live on.  One summer afternoon after my father had left, the cows meandered out into the cornfield.  Now these can be dangerous for the cows because they don't know when to stop eating and they could kill themselves by eating too much corn.  My mother and I attempted to chase the cows back into the barn but were unsuccessful.  She went into the house to call my father and have him come home from work.  She told me to come in as well and leave the cows alone.  I prayed to God and asked that He helped me drive the cows back to the barn.  And by some miracle, I did.  God answered my prayer.  What I have never understood is why the prayer was answered when the result was I disobeyed my mother.  That story has circulated within my family for years and gave me the impression that I had a special connection to God.  That connection was broken when I was seventeen, but that is a story for another time.