Rafael Alberti

"In the very beginning I looked to painting as the medium for addressing concerns in shapes and colors.  Then it was poetry where these concerns found expression through the medium of word and metaphor."

Rafael Alberti

Spanish Painter, Poet

1902 - 1999

I am fascinated by creative leaders who use more than one medium to express themselves.  Rafael Alberti was one of those who was at home both in the visual arts and the written word.  The need to create and communicate one's feelings transcends the medium.  Some writers work in short stories, novels, poetry and plays.  Some artists paint, draw and sculpt.  And then there are the writers who also paint and the painters who also write.  Or the musicians who paint and the actors who play music.  We all have the urge to express ourselves.  The medium of paint, words or music is just the vehicle to carry the communication.

What vehicles do you like to use to express your artistic desires?  Poetry?  Music?  Painting?  Acting?  Plays?  Dancing?  Sculpting?  Novels?  Short Stories?  Have you stepped outside your comfort zone and tried something new?  

John Cheever

"The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness."

— John Cheever

American Novelist

1912 - 1982

We all have a need to understand our lives and the things that happen to us.  Some turn to religion.  Others turn to history or politics or science.  Creative leaders turn to their art.  The stories we tell help us to make sense of who we are and why we are here.  And often we change the facts of our lives to tell a better story.  What stories are you telling in your artistic works?  How have you altered the facts of your stories to tell a greater truth?  




John Cheever is a perfect example of a writer who rewrote his life in his short stories and novels.  Born on May 27, 1912, John Cheever was the unwanted second child.  His father tried to convince his mother to have an abortion.  A storyteller from a young age, Cheever read Proust's In Search of Lost Time at the age of fourteen.  He dropped out of high school and never went to college.  He sold his first story to The New Republic at age 18.  For more than twenty years he published only short stories.  His first novel was not published until he was in his mid-forties.  In 1979 three years before his death, he won a Pulitzer Prize for a collection of his short stories that I highly recommend all creative leaders read.

Dorothy Dunnett

"Facts are the soil from which the story grows.  Imagination is a last resort."

Dorothy Dunnett

Scottish Novelist, Portrait Painter

1923 - 2001

A story should be rooted in reality.  The reader needs to be able to relate the characters to the world that he knows.  Consider the novel, Watership Down, by Richard Adams.  The story is about rabbits and yet, we identify with them because of their human characteristics.  Dorothy Dunnett was a writer of historical novels who did immense research to place her stories in historical reality.  But facts are never enough.  It is in the imagination that the story takes wings and flies far from the facts to spin a story that touches the minds and hearts of the readers.

Have you rooted your stories in the reality?  Have you used your imagination to carry the stories to the heavens?  How about your paintings?  Is there something in the work with which we can identify?  Does the painting carry us beyond the facts into another world?

Fernando Del Paso

Venus de Milo
Ancient Greek Statue

"Literature and music exist in time: they have a beginning and an end.  Painting and sculpture exist in space. . . . Where does the Venus de Milo begin: in her navel, in her breasts, or in her head?  Where does an abstract painting begin: in the lower left corner, or in the center?"

— Fernando Del Paso

Mexican Novelist, Painter and Poet

1935 -

Back of
Venus de Milo

De Paso has raised a very interesting question:  where does a painting or a sculpture begin?  When analyzing a painting, people often identify at what point the eye is drawn into the painting.  At what point do we the viewer enter into the picture?  But that point of entry is not the beginning of the painting.  In fact, paintings and sculptures have no beginning.  They just are here and now.

The flip side of this question is:  where does the novel exist?  In the head of the writer?  On the pages of the book it is printed in?  In cyberspace somewhere?  Or in the head of the reader?  And what novel are we talking about?  Is the novel that is in the writer's head the same as the novel on the page?  Is the novel that is in the reader's head the same as what is in the writer's imagination?  

Fernando Del Paso

How many times have you as a reader altered the novel on the page by changing the looks of a character or the physical location of the story.  Unlike the painting which is concrete and visual, the novel is nebulous and changing.  Yes, we can impose our stories upon the painting, but the painting still exists outside of us.  We change the novel as soon as it enters our brain.  We have altered the story as imagined by the novelist.

Have you ever wished that a novel would not end?  You may even have slowed down your reading so that the ending would be delayed?  Novels exist in time and have a beginning and a ending, but we can continue to revisit them through our memory. 

Sidney Nolan

"Painting is an extension of man's means of communication.  As such, it's pure, difficult, and wonderful."

— Sidney Nolan

Australian Artist

1917 - 1992

All the arts are about communication.  Whether you paint, write, sing or act, you are involved in the process of communicating.  And communication is one of the most difficult aspects of being human.  We never seem to get it right.  Marriages break up over the inability to communicate.  Children don't speak to their parents.  Bosses fail to inspire their employees.

Painting, poetry and novels are highly specialized forms of communication — an attempt by the artist to tell the world what he is feeling.  And sometimes he is successful and sometimes he is not.  Take this painting, Death of Sergeant Kennedy at Stringbark Creek, by Sidney Nolan.  What does it communicate to you?  If I asked 10 different people the same question, I bet I would get 10 different answers.  Communication is very difficult.  If it was easy, we probably would not have a need for creative leaders who work hard at communicating.




Even artists and writers don't always know what they are communicating with their creative work.  Paintings, poetry and novels are often communicating on multiple levels with multiple messages.  The painter, poet and novelist are aware of some of these messages but not all of them.  That is what makes art so fascinating.




If you are interested in feedback from your audience, don't ask whether they liked the work or if it was any good.  Ask: "What does my painting, poem or story communicate to you?"  Then listen with your heart and soul.  You may be amazed at what others see in your work.