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.

Duke Ellington

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues."

Duke Ellington

American Composer, Musician

1899 - 1974

Many of us waste energy complaining.  We need to learn to transform our frustrations, fears and failures into positive energy that inspires us to create great works of art.  Are you feeling down today, maybe even depressed?  Great.  Use that negative energy to create.  Write through the frustration.  Paint a picture with large dramatic brush strokes.  Are you angry and upset?  Transform that negative energy.  Splatter the canvas with paint.  Quickly write a poem in very large letters and don't rewrite it.  Read the poem aloud to the universe.  Is your heart broken and you can't stop crying?  Give yourself a hug and sing in a loud voice a country song about your broken heart and the mean person who broke it.  Be sure to sing off key.  Paint a picture of a heart in agony.  Dance wildly about the living room and do a belly laugh.

Emotions are a part of being human.  What most people don't realize is that they can control and change their emotions.  Don't wallow in self-pity, take charge of your life and choose to change your emotions.  Do something that gets you out of that rut.  Climb a mountain in your backyard.  Take photos of squirrels chasing each other in fun.  Go for a swim.  Listen to Duke Ellington.

Hermann Hesse

"Without words, without writing and without books, there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.







— Hermann Hesse

German Poet, Novelist and Painter

1877 - 1962

We often take for granted the words we speak and the words we write.  We are so busy with our lives that we fail to give thanks for one of the most important things that human beings share — language.  Without language, communication would be much more difficult and we probably would not have achieved many of inventions that have been created.  And at the heart of language are the words we speak and write.  Writers understand the power of words and the importance of choosing the perfect word for the moment.  The  wrong word used at the wrong time has destroyed lives.  

Ticino Landscape
(1920)

And words have such power that we have made some words off limits.  Polite society does not say certain words.  And many today strive to be political correct and when our TV and radio personalities cross the line, they are fired or forced to resign for saying certain words.  The old saying that sticks and stones will hurt my bones but words will never harm is simply not true.  We all have stored in our memory banks words that were said by some authority figure like a parent or teacher that have emotionally harmed us for years and decades.

It is time to celebrate the power of words and language.  It is time we give writers their due.  They spend a lifetime working with words — seeking to understand and communicate that which is best in each of us.  It is time to believe in the great gift we have been given — language.

Heinrich Heine

Painting of Heine
by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings."

— Heinrich Heine

German Poet

1797 - 1856

When a nation or society has no respect for its artists, writers and musicians, it is a nation in danger of losing its humanity.  I find it very sad that in this country where liberty is held in high esteem that there are people who choose to burn books.  When my daughter was in high school, she knew teenagers who participated in the burning of books with members of their church.  How ignorant these people must be.  Books are our connection to the world beyond our immediate home.  But it is not just in this country and it is not just books.  In 2001 when the Taliban were in power in Afghanistan, they destroyed two 1700 year-old Buddha statues carved in a cliff in the Hindu Kush mountains.  Other cultures have destroyed paintings.  And governments and societies have tried to control the type of art works that are created.  Both Hitler and Stalin restricted the type of art that could be created.

Artists, writers and musicians are one of the greatest treasures that a society has and yet people continue to treat them with contempt — telling them to get a real job.  In fact, the way we know about the past is through the artists, writers and the musicians.  We would know very little about ancient Rome or Greece if it were not for books and paintings.  Future societies will know us primarily through the writers and painters of today.  Our legacy is past down through our art.  

Here is a poem by Heinrich Heine.

WHY THE ROSES ARE SO PALE

by: Heinrich Heine (1799-1856)

 DEAREST, canst thou tell me why




The rose should be so pale?




And why the azure violet




Should wither in the vale?




 




And why the lark should in the cloud




So sorrowfully sing?




And why from loveliest balsam-buds




A scent of death should spring?




 




And why the sun upon the mead




So chillingly should frown?




And why the earth should, like a grave,




Be moldering and brown?




 




And why it is that I myself




So languishing should be?




And why it is, my heart of hearts,




That thou forsakest me?

This English translation of "Why the Roses are so Pale" was composed by Richard Garnett (1835-1906).

Medardo Rosso

"What the artist must aim at above all else is this: to produce, by any process whatever, a work which by the life and humanity emanating from it communicates to the beholder . . . ."

— Medardo Rosso

Italian Sculptor

1858 - 1928

Ecce Puer
Behold the Boy
(1906)

Who is the audience for your creative work?  This is a question I have struggled with for years.  Is there an audience for my work?  Is there someone who understands what I am communicating?  First, poetry has a very small readership in this country.  So the audience from which I can draw my readership is very small.  Second, finding this readership is very difficult.  One would hope that one could find a readership among other poets, but there are many people who write poetry who have never read it.  Third, what I write does not fit within the historical categories of poetry.  I don't rhyme or follow western forms.  I did spend seven years writing and studying Japanese haiku which many in the west perceive as an exercise for school children.  So after 35 years of writing, I have yet to find an audience for my writing who will stand in line for six hours to buy my next book.  In fact, there are days I can't give it away.  But I don't let the lack of an audience stop me from writing.  I keep writing and believing that one day someone will read and appreciate.

Lillian Hellman

"Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped."

— Lillian Hellman

American Playwright

1905 - 1984

Often what we create does not match our expectations of what we imagined we would create.  Creation takes hard work and the process of re-creating again and again until we come close to capturing our vision of what we thought we wanted to say.  Rarely, though, does the end product match what we imagined it to be in the beginning.  The process of creation changes the vision and perfects its limited and narrow perspective.  Our imagination gives us the seed necessary to start us on our journey, but hard work is the rain that the seed needs to help it grow into a beautiful rose.  Be patient with yourself.  Don't quit just because reality does not match your dreams.  Keep working.  Keep learning.  Keep growing.  Some day what you create will be what you want it to be.

Gustave Flaubert

"Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

Gustave Flaubert

French Novelist

1821 - 1880 

For me, I work best when my everyday life is dull and boring.  The more things I can do as a routine habit allows my mind to flow freely.  My wife, though, keeps me on my toes by constantly re-arranging the house.  She reorganizes the kitchen cabinets periodically.  I go to pour myself a cup of coffee and the cups are not where they should be.  When I am looking for a bowl or a plate, it is not where it should be.  But she doesn't stop with the kitchen.  She re-arranges the various rooms to suit her moods.  All this re-learning is a challenge for someone who prefers to keep his routines the same every day.  The reason I prefer routines is so my mind does not have to worry about what shirt to wear or what food to eat.  My mind is free to concentrate on what is important like the poem I am writing.  The more normal and routine my life is; the more I can go crazy in my mind.  As a writer I live in my imagination.  Some might call me the absent-minded professor.

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.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Picture yourself vividly as winning and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success. Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be."







Harry Emerson Fosdick

American Author, Clergy

1878 - 1969







Do you see yourself as a successful writer, successful artist or successful actor?  Success begins in the mind.  If you want to be successful, you need to see yourself as a success.  You need to believe in yourself and your talent.  Another word for it is visualization.  You need to visualize your success.  The mind is very powerful.  You must first see yourself as successful.

Do you ever worry?  Maybe you worry about having enough money to pay the bills.  Or maybe you worry about those you love.  Most people worry at one time or another.  Worry is a negative form of visualization.  Worry is visualization of your deepest fears.

Harness the visual power within your mind to create your success as an artist, a writer and a creative leader.  See yourself writing a novel, painting a picture, or writing a screenplay.

Jonathan Hull

"Without art; without paintings, books, sculpture and music, the human soul would be quite impenetrable, don't you think?"

— Jonathan Hull

American Novelist, Journalist

Can you imagine a world without art?  No books to read.  No writers of poetry.  No paintings.  No sculpture.  No music.  No theater.  No movies.  No stories.  Could you live in such a world?  And yet there are people who live lives without creating and appreciating the world of art.  They have no interest in books, paintings or music.  I for one could not live in such a world. 

I have a strong need to create a work of art.  To write a poem.  To sing a song.  To paint a picture.  To tell a story.  Without creative work, my soul would die a slow death.  Celebrate the fact that you have the ability to appreciate great works of art.  Believe that you have the skill to create great works of art.

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

Oscar Wilde

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not the sitter."

— Oscar Wilde

Irish Poet, Novelist, Playwright

1854 -1900

Writers, artists and poets reinvent themselves in their work.  When they create a character or paint a portrait, they are recreating a portion of themselves and their lives.  Yes, it may be a portrait of another person, but the artist leaves a piece of his soul in the painting.  The great artists and writers put themselves in their work.  

Remember that your emotions, your feelings are important to your success.  Reach deep within yourself and find the heart of your emotion.  Open yourself up to the world and find the words and images that convey your emotions in new and exciting ways.

See if you can identify the artists of these portraits of women.

Charlie Parker

"Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom.  If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.  They teach you that music has boundaries.  But, man, there's no boundary line to art."

— Charlie Parker

American Jazz Saxophonist, Composer

1920 - 1955

Our art comes from our experiences, our thoughts, our wisdom and our dreams.  If we don't live life, art won't pour out of our brushes, our pens or our voices.  We need the experiences from life to generate our art.  We need to have loved and had our hearts broken.  We need to face failure and survive.  Art comes from our imperfections, not our perfections.  If the world was perfect, we would never create.  There would be no reason to create.  We would be happy and satisfied.  Art comes from our discontent — our unhappiness, our loneliness. 

So if you have been fired from your job, write a story about the experience of being fired.  Paint a picture of the boss that fired you.  Recreate the world the way you wish it would be.  If angel of death visits those you love, find a way to turn your grief into art.  If the person to whom you gave the best twenty years of your life leaves you for a younger person, create a painting of your feelings.  Anything that happens to you is fodder for your creativity.  Absorb the experience and re-imagine it happening to one of your characters.  Did you have an unhappy childhood?  Alter the past by changing the story.  Your life is the fuel for your art.  So live life to the fullest.

Take a few minutes and listen to Charlie Parker and be inspired.

Terry McMillan

"Writing is my shelter.  I don't hide behind the words; I use them to dig inside my heart to find the truth."

— Terry McMillan

American Novelist

1951 -

What is your art for you?  Is it your shelter?  Your protection?  Your connection to the outside world? Whether we are writers, painters or poets, our art serves us in many ways.  Sometimes it provides us hope for a better world.  Sometimes it provides us with the strength to go on living.  Often it saves us from our own worst selves.  Some of us are better people because of our art.

Do you tell the truth with your art?  Do you share what needs to be shared.  Or do you hide behind your art?  Do you dig deep inside your soul and reveal the truth?  Or do you share only what floats on the surface of the water?

Graham Greene

"Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation."

— Graham Greene

British Novelist

1904 - 1991

Have you ever thought of your writing or your painting as a form of therapy, as a way to help you through the challenges you face in life with at least a part of your sanity?  This goes to the heart of who do we create for?  Ourselves or others?  I think the answer for the most part is ourselves.  If we write what others want us to write or paint what others want us to paint, I think we hurt ourselves more than help ourselves.  We all have demons in our lives that we must work through.  For some it is their childhood.  For others it is the death of someone they loved dearly.  For others it is the spiritual doubts they have.  Creating works of art helps us cope with the pain that is at the heart of our lives.  It helps us face the fears that try to force us into hiding.  It helps us to keep the madness at bay for a little while.

Laura Kasischke

"Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better.  Sometimes people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed.  But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love."

— Laura Kasischke

American Novelist, Poet

1961 - 

If success comes too early, it can destroy an artist.  Early success can create writer's block.  Artists become overwhelmed by the success and stop painting.  People start enjoying their celebrity status and forget about what brought them there.  And sometimes they start believing their own press clippings.  Sometimes it is better to wait until you are emotionally ready and have the wisdom to handle it.  

If writing or painting comes too easy, people often lose interest and look for something more challenging.  If writing is a struggle, then success when it comes will be sweeter.  Have the faith to keep writing, to keep drawing or to keep painting even when there seems to be no hope of success.  

Ralph Steadman

"What I used to do with a passion, foolishly and vainly imagining I would change the world for the better, I no longer tolerate in myself or anyone else.  But draw, always draw — and WRITE."

— Ralph Steadman

British Artist, Writer

1936 -

Have you ever dreamed of changing the world — making it a better place?  Unfortunately, most people have very little influence on the world at large.  And with the one person that we do have influence over — ourselves — we usually lack the discipline for long-term change.  Have you ever tried to change a spouse or a significant other?  It rarely works.  I have often heard of wrecked marriages resulting from one person trying to change the other.

The Sheriff
1995

Revolution is often said to be the passion of youth.  And if one does not die in the revolution, one grows wiser with age.  If you study history, you will realize that even when the evil empire is overthrown, it is usually replaced by another empire that eventually becomes evil itself.  And the cycle continues.  The young want power and the old are unwilling to relinquish it.

And what you might add does all this have to do with art and writing?  Every generation or two there are revolutions in artistic taste and style.  The younger generation of artists challenges the older generation.  Today abstract expressionism is giving way to a resurgence of realism.  And tomorrow?  I won't even begin to predict.

I think Ralph Steadman has hit the nail on the head.  Stop worrying about changing the world, your spouse or even yourself.  Just create:  draw, paint and write. 

Kimon Nicolaides

"Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see — to see correctly — and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye."

— Kimon Nicolaides

American Artist, Teacher, Author

1891 - 1938

The arts involve the five senses of seeing, hearing, touch, taste and smell.  We understand the world in which we live through these five senses.  How we see the world impacts our ability to draw, paint and write.  

When I arrived home yesterday, my wife asked if I had noticed a hat hanging on one of my favorite wood statues.  I had not.  She said the hat had been there for several weeks.  My visual intake of the world around me is very selective.  I never notice the clothes people wear and I could not tell you what you were wearing yesterday.  Yet, if I visit a place I have not seen in five years, I will recognize the buildings.  

I put very little description of places and people in my writing.  And when I am reading a book with a lot of description, I tend to skip over it.

On the other hand, I am very auditory.  I can hear the slightest change in the tone of a voice.  I can hear the softest of sounds.  I cannot sleep with the radio or TV playing.  But I cannot sing worth a lick.  In fact, some people would say I am tone deaf.

How do the five senses impact your painting or writing?  Are you a visual person?  An auditory person?  How about the senses of touch, taste and smell?

Weldon Kees

"Modern society pushes people in the groove.  Although I was always interested in music and painting as well as poetry, at first I thought I had to concentrate on writing. . . one thing only.  But then the urge to paint was so strong I just went ahead and started oils.  And I didn't give up my writing — one did not exclude the other."

Weldon Kees

American Poet, Painter, Composer, Short Story Writer

1914 - 1955

As a creative leader, do you limit you creative expression to one type of art?  The common myth is that people can only do one thing.  Write poetry?  Paint portraits?  Compose music?  Write novels?  The myth is that we should focus on only one form of expression; otherwise, we will dilute our creativity not not do anything well.  We have become a society of specialists.  Painters should not write.  Writers should not play a musical instrument.  Actors should not write.

Kees believed that he could both paint and write.  "He said, "Shifting from one to the other I don't get into periods of absolute sterility that are often experienced by writers who just write, or painters who just paint."

Are you suffering from writer's block?  Pick up a paint brush and explore the world of color. Are you bored with painting?  Pick up a pen and write about your feelings.  Flipping back and forth between various art forms will keep you and your ideas fresh.

Here is a poem by Weldon Kees.

The Upstairs Room

It must have been in March the rug wore through.

Now the day passes and I stare

At warped pine boards my father's father nailed,

At the twisted grain.  Exposed, where emptiness allows,

Are the wormholes of eighty years; four generations' shoes

Stumble and scrape and fall

To the floor my father stained,

The new blood streaming from his head.  The drift

Of autumn fires and a century's cigars, that gun's

Magnanimous and brutal smoke, endure.

In March the rug was ragged as the past.  The thread

Rots like the lives we fasten on.  Now it is August,

And the floor is blank, worn smooth,

And, for my life, imperishable.

James Galvin

"Let us begin with a simple line,

Drawn as a child would draw it,

To indicate the horizon...."

— James Galvin

American Poet

1951 -

In drawing and writing, we almost always begin with the line.  The line turns into letters which turn into words which turn into sentences.  And eventually the sentences become poems, short stories and novels.  The same is often true is art.  The line becomes an eye, then a nose and soon a face.  The drawing begins as a simple line much like what a child starts with.  The artist then transforms that line into a beautiful portrait, landscape or abstract painting.

When we begin the canvas and the paper are blank, empty, without much meaning.  As creative artists our job is transform that paper or that canvas into more.  To create something out of a simple line.  To communicate our vision of the world through a simple line joined with other simple lines — one built on another.

The same can be said about life.  Each moment we live is like a simple line.  We build a life through living each moment to the fullest.  And millions of moments become a life lived.  

Here is the poem, Art Class, by James Galvin.

Art Class

By James Galvin

Let us begin with a simple line,

Drawn as a child would draw it,

To indicate the horizon,

More real than the real horizon,

Which is less than line,

Which is a visible abstraction, a ratio.

The line ravishes the page with implications

Of white earth, white sky!

The horizon moves as we move,

Making us feel central.

But the horizon is an empty shell —

Strange radius whose center is peripheral.

As the horizon draws us on, withdrawing,

The line draws us in,

Requiring further lines,

Engendering curves, verticals, diagonals,

Urging shades, shapes, figures...

What should we place, in all good faith,

On the horizon? A stone?

An empty chair? A submarine?

Take your time.  Take it easy.

The horizon will not stop abstracting us.