Michele Cassou

"If you do not listen to your intuition, it will stop talking to you.  Your intuition is like a sensitive friend.  If you question it, censor it, judge it, it gets hurt and becomes silent."

— Michele Cassou

French Artist, Teacher

You have to train yourself to listen to your intuition because your rational mind is very strong and often discards your intuition immediately.  In fact, it sometimes happens so fast that what you think is your intuition is actually your second on third thought.  The rational mind can move very quickly to override intuition.  Train yourself to grab hold of your intuition and not let go.  Learn to trust your feelings and first thoughts.  

And in the beginning you will often misunderstand your intuition.  Be patient.  It is okay to make mistakes.  The problem is not that your intuition is wrong, but that your interpretation is not accurate.  Sometimes it will take years to perfect listening to your intuition.  Trust your heart.  

Marcel Duchamp

"I force myself to contradict myself, so as to avoid conforming to my own taste."

Marcel Duchamp

French Artist

1887 - 1968

Nude Descending
A Staircase No. 2
(1912)

Do you ever feel that you are in rut — repeating the same stories over and over, painting the same landscape again and again?  Sometimes we fall into a rut and don't even know.  Our creative works become the same — bland and boring.  What are you doing to make your art fresh and new?  How do you challenge yourself to step outside your comfort zone?  How do you avoid old habits?

As creative leaders, you need to challenge yourself — explore new territory, try new ideas.  We all can become stale and tired.  You need to find new sources of ideas — new ways of seeing the world.

Pierre Auguste Renoir

Self-Portrait

(1875)

"It is not enough for a painter to be a clever craftsman; he must love to 'caress' his canvas, too.

— Pierre Auguste Renoir

French Artist

1841 - 1919

For some people the process of creation is painful and difficult.  They struggle to put words on paper or paint on the canvas.  They let their fear of failure or their drive for perfection prevent them from working.  Others love to work.  They are happiest standing before a canvas or sitting before a computer.  Work comes easy for them.  Which person are you?  Do you love your work?  Do you enjoy painting?  Can you get lost in process of painting?  Do you enjoy writing?  Can you write for hours and suddenly stop and realize how fast the time has flown by?  Or do you procrastinate and look for ways to avoid working?  Do you tell yourself that you have to clean the house, wash the dishes or pay the bills instead of working on your art or writing?

Umbrellas

(1981)

Read my poem, Indecision, inspired by Renoir's painting, Umbrellas.

Jean-Baptist-Camille Corot

Interrupted Reading

"Don't imitate, don't follow the others, or else you will lag behind them."

— Jean-Baptist-Camille Corot

French Painter

1796 - 1875

As a creative leader, you want to standout.  You need to develop your own unique style.  This can not happen if you are imitating others.  Follow your vision, not the vision of others.  Be innovative and different.  Set the standard for others to follow.  

When you follow your own vision, there will be detractors who tell you it can't be done.  Ignore the naysayers — those who say you are a fool.   Don't listen to their negativity.  Hold true to your heart and to what you believe to be the path for you.

The Bridge at Nantes

Edgar Degas

Self-Portrait
(1855)

"Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things."

— Edgar Degas

French Artist

1834 - 1917

Dancers
(1978)

Have you ever become so lost in your creativity that you don't know what you are doing?  I sometimes become so caught up in the writing of the moment that I don't realize what I am saying.  I read my writing a day or two later and am surprised by what I said.  The more I can quiet the conscious mind and let the subconscious mind take charge, the more creative the writing becomes.  

The difference between the conscious mind and subconscious mind is one of control.  The subconscious is more wild, free and metaphoric.  The conscious mind is more analytical, linear and controlling.  Creativity requires entering the subconscious and exploring the world through its eyes.  The more we try to control our art the less creative and original it becomes.  The more we relinquish control, the stronger the creative impulse.

Suzanne Valadon

"I paint with the stubbornness I need for living, and I've found that all painters who love their art do the same."

— Suzanne Valadon

French Painter

1865 - 1938

Suzanne Valadon was the daughter of an unmarried laundress.  When she was 15, she joined the circus, but was forced to quit a year later after falling off a trapeze.  She eventually became a model for artists including Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec where she studied their artistic techniques.  She is best known for painting female nudes but also painted landscapes, florals and still life.  She sometimes worked as long as 13 years on a painting before showing it in public.

To be a creative artist, you need to be persistent because many obstacles will get in your way including your own need for perfection.  The creative journey is only for the stubborn.  How long are you willing to work at your painting?  Your writing?  Your acting?  Or do you give into family pressure?  Societal pressure?  

What are you willing to sacrifice for your creative work?  What are you willing to give up?  Life is never easy and the same is true for the creative leader.  There are many days when you will take one step forward and three backwards.  Do you have the stubbornness to keep going even when you see very little light at the end of the tunnel?

Suzanne Valadon was the model for these paintings by Renoir:

Dance At Bougival

Eugene Delacroix

"Finishing a painting demands a heart of steel: everything requires a decision, and I find difficulties where I least expect them. . . . It is at such moments that one fully realizes one's own weaknesses."

— Eugene Delacroix

French Artist

1796 - 1863

Greece Expiring on the Ruins
of Messolonghi
(1826)

In one of my filing cabinets is a novel that I spent four years writing but never finished.  As artists and  writers, we often start projects but never finish them.  Sometimes we lose interest.  Sometimes we are not happy with the outcome.  It does not match what we see in our mind's eye.  Sometimes we are afraid to finish — afraid to make the necessary decisions.  The joy and excitement is in the creation of something new.  The hard work is in finishing.

What paintings have you not finished?  What songs have you stopped writing?  What stories lay buried in a drawer unfinished?  Maybe it is time to pick up the manuscript or the painting and try again.  Approach it from a new angle, a new perspective.

Then again, maybe it is okay not to finish the work.  Maybe we were just practicing, preparing ourselves for greater work yet to come.  So don't beat yourself up because you didn't finish.  Things come to fruition in their own time, not our time.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Self-Portrait

(1804)

"A painter can turn pennies into gold, for all subjects are capable of being transformed into poems."

— Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

French Artist

1780 - 1867

The Valpincon Bather

(1806)

Some people believe that art is only about painting beauty.  Other people believe that writers should not write about certain subjects.   And still others seek to censor artists and writers.  Think about books that have been banned in school districts or art that is considered pornographic.  The American Library Association publishes online a list of 100 novels that have been banned from time to time.

What subjects do you avoid painting or writing about?  In what ways do you censor your own creative tendencies.  Do you paint to please others?  Do you avoid writing about certain events because it could hurt others?  How do you choose the subjects that you paint or write about?  Or does the subject choose you?  Do write about what interests you or do you write what you think the world wants to read?  Consider how many writers now write about vampires since the success of Ann Rice.  Or how many writers follow in the footsteps of the Harry Potter books.

Do you think Ingres is correct?  Can a painter can turn pennies into gold?  Can a writer make any subject poetic?  

Louise de Broglie

(1845)

Eugene Delacroix

Self-Portrait (1837)

"What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough."

— Eugene Delacroix

French Artist

1798 - 1863

Orphan Girl at the Cemetery

(1923)

Why do you write?  Why do you paint?  What inspires your creative work?  Do you have something new to say to the world?  Are you obsessed with telling the world what you know?  We each create for different reasons — some we are conscious of and others that are hidden even from us.  

I personally believe that there is little in the universe of humanity that has not been thought, said or written by someone somewhere, but fortunately, we have forgotten much of what has been learned by previous generations and each generation has to learn anew.  It is in the relearning of the forgotten that we have the inspiration to create what has not been created — to reshape the myths of the world.

I challenge each creative leader to study history — to understand what happened before you were born.  It is in the knowing of the past that you can begin to reshape the future — to create anew that which is ancient, to find the thread that ties us together.

Liberty Leading the People

(1830) The Louvre

Pierre Auguste Renoir

Self-Portrait, 1910

"There are some things in painting which cannot be explained, and that something is essential."

Pierre Auguste Renoir

French Artist

1841 - 1919

On the Terrace, 1881

All art (painting, sculpture, literature, music, etc) has something that cannot be explained, identified or understood.  A work of art is greater than its creator.  A work of art is greater than the sum of its parts.  When you look at a painting what do you see?  What do you not see?  What is the soul of the painting?  When you read a story what do you feel?  What do you not feel?  What is the heart of the story?  When you listen to music what do you hear?  What do you not hear?  What is the spirit of the music?

When I write a poem, I don't always understand it and others may understand it even less.  The poem has a life of its own — a meaning of its own.  I will come upon it weeks, months and even years later and it has been transformed into something I do not know.  Some days I like it and some I don't, but it is beyond my control.  It laughs at me and demands that I leave it alone.  It never thanks me for bringing it into existence.  It accuses me of locking it in a closet.  It says I was a terrible parent.

Paul Gauguin

Self Portrait, 1893

"Poor artist!  You gave away part of your soul when you painted the picture which you are now trying to dispose of."

— Paul Gauguin

French Artist

1848 - 1903

Tahitian Women on the Beach

1891

The ying and the yang for most artists is the conflict between the passion for creating and the need to eat, between time spend painting and time spend selling.  How do we balance these two opposites?  Most of us would prefer to paint, to write and to compose, but we also have the need to feed our families and to a lesser extent ourselves.  Some people take jobs teaching.  Others work in business.  The poet Wallace Stevens spent his career as a lawyer for an insurance company.  How do you balance the need for creating art and the need for cash to live?

Henri Matisse

"Creation is the artist's true function; where there is no creation there is no art."

— Henri Matisse

French Artist

1869 - 1954

Matisse, Woman With A Hat, 1905

Most of us are drawn to the arts because of a need to create something, to express what we are feeling.  Those who stay involved with some art form, such as writing, painting or acting, must also learn technique, but if in the study of techniques we forget creativity, we have lost touch with the purpose of art.  Creativity is the very heart of what we do.  The mastery and perfection of technique must never be more important then the creative impulse.  The art we create must be fresh and new, not boring and repetitious.

Jean-Baptist-Camille Corot

"I hope with all my heart that there will be painting in heaven."

— Jean-Baptist-Camille Corot

French Artist

1796 - 1875

his dying words

Working in health care all these years has taught me that death comes to us all and that we need to be ready for it.  I love this quote because it expresses a deep desire to always be creating.  How terrible a place this world would be if we could not paint, write or sing.  Death for me is not being able to create, not being able to express myself.  When I have stopped writing for periods of time, I felt like I had died.  I ask the same question of God:  "Will I be able to write poetry in heaven?"

Paul Gauguin

"Color!  What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams."

— Paul Gauguin

French Artist

1848 - 1903

As a writer, I have lived in a black and white world.  The pages of books are black and white.  The page I write on is black and white.  I have come to color only slowly when I took up the study of art about a decade ago.  The complexity of color is hard to understand.  Since the impressionists, color has been celebrated and let free.  The old Dutch masters were darker, deeper.  What is the color of your life?  Bright?  Sparkling?  Deep?  Dank?  Dark?  Autumn is coming — my favorite season.  A time of reflection.  The colors shift and darken.  The greens fade from the world.  We see yellows, reds and browns.  Then winter will be here and we are back to black and white, waiting for spring to sprout.

Henri Matisse

"One gets into a state of creativity by conscious work."

— Henri Matisse

French Artist

1869 - 1954

I have heard many want-to-be writers and artists say they are waiting for the creative inspiration.  They can only write or draw when they are inspired.  Unfortunately, that is not the real world.  If we wait for our muse to come, she may never arrive.  The key to finding your inspiration and creativity is to work every day.  Maybe it is for a half hour or an hour, but one must work.  And you might feel that what you did was terrible.  But let it sit and come back to it later and you will see it in a different light.  Creativity is a process.  To produce great work, one must produce junk.

Henri Matisse

"The character of a face in a drawing depends not upon its various proportions, but upon a spiritual light which it reflects."

— Henri Matisse

French Artists

1869 - 1954

Like an artist or a novelist, we all need to see beyond the surface characteristics of the human face.  We need to see the individual person who lives within.  We have been taught not to judge a book by its cover, yet how many times do we still do it.  Inside every person, beyond the hair and the clothes, is something very special.  Sometimes it takes work to find that person because the person has hid himself behind so many masks that he does not even know who he is.  And the same can be said of ourselves.  How many masks would you have to take off before the light within you would shine through?

Gustave Courbet

"Art is a wholly physical language whose words are all the visible objects."

— Gustave Courbet

French Painter

1819 - 1877