Robert Mapplethorpe

Self-Portrait
(1980)

"My work is about seeing — seeing things like they haven't been seen before."

— Robert Mapplethorpe

American Photographer

1946 - 1989

One of main functions of any art form is to help people see something they had not seen before — to open their eyes to new ways of viewing the world.  Does your creative work shed new light on the way we view the world?  Does it help us see beyond our small private worlds and help us grasp a greater meaning about life?

Part of our role as creative leaders is to show people that there are multiple ways of viewing the world in which we live.  There is not just one reality but multiple realities.  Great art changes people in multiple ways.  Our hearts and minds open and begin to see in ways we have never seen.

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Wayne Thiebaud

"If we don't have a sense of humor, 

we lack a sense of perspective."

— Wayne Thiebaud

American Painter

1920 - 

Pies, Pies, Pies
(1961)

Have you laughed today?  In these crazy times (and when have they not been crazy?), we need to be able to find humor in the absurdity of living or we will quickly lose perspective.  We will fail to see the forest.  Laughter and humor are essential for maintaining one's sanity in a difficult, confusing and chaotic world.  

Humor is something I have to work at.  I often don't laugh at what others find funny and yet I will have moments of belly shaking laughter which seem to arise out of nowhere.  Rarely, do I find comedians funny, particularly humor that puts down some group of people.  Yet, I will be listening to a news show on National Public Radio and I will find it funny.  I find humor in the absurd.  And politics are absurd.  Last week I was listening to a preacher on a CD and I broke out laughing.  I know that was not his intent, but I found what he said as ridiculous.  

Do you have a sweet tooth?  Then you will enjoy the art of Wayne Thiebaud — lots of pies, cakes and ice cream.  Go get yourself a bowl of ice cream and sit down and watch this video.  And don't forget to find something to laugh at today.  

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Arthur Koestler

"Every creative act involves. . . a new innocence of perception, liberated from the cataract of accepted belief."

Arthur Koestler

Hungarian Novelist and Writer

1905 - 1983

Creativity involves breaking down old ways of seeing and believing and discovering new perceptions and ways of understanding the world.  Creativity must first be a destructive force as it destroys the old patterns and beliefs.  We must tear down before we can build.  Then destruction gives way to rebirth and renewal and the generation of innocence and hope.  This is the paradox of creative energy: Death and Rebirth.  Destruction and Rebuilding.  Cynicism and Innocence.  Doubt and Faith.

Are you looking at the world in new ways?  Have you discovered new ways of thinking about your art?  Have you liberated yourself from the prison of the past?  Have you found hope in what you are creating?  Have you opened the door to the future?

You have read this article Arthur Koestler / Beliefs / creativity / Death / Destruction / Discovery / Doubt / faith / hope / Hungarian Writers / Innocence / Paradox / Perception / Perspective / Rebirth with the title Perspective. You can bookmark this page URL https://gem-vita.blogspot.com/2011/07/arthur-koestler.html. Thanks!

Frederick Franck

"I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have not really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle."

— Frederick Franck

Dutch Painter, Sculptor, Author

1909 - 2006

What we know of the world we know through our senses.  Yet, we often spend so much time in our head with our thoughts that we don't experience the world around us.  Have you ever walked past a flower, a tree or a stream a hundred times and yet know nothing of the stream, or tree or flower.  What have you missed in the world around you because you are so busy thinking about your life, your problems or your family?  When you begin to see the tree as it is, will you paint it in a different way.  Franck also said, "Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world."  Are you rediscovering the world around you through your drawing?

Do you hear the conversations of your friends and family members or are you so busy thinking about what you are going to say that you fail to listen to them.  A writer of dialogue must listen to the language used by the people around him.  Do you see how the people around you dress?  The way they carry themselves?  How they move about the room?  It is through the behavior we see that we find the clues to who the person is.  And it is through the behavior we describe that our readers know our characters.

You have read this article Description / Discipline / Dutch Artists / Dutch Writers / Five Senses / flowers / Focus / Frederick Franck / Miracle / Mother Nature / nature / Perception / Perspective / Physical World / Sacred / Seeing / Spiritual with the title Perspective. You can bookmark this page URL https://gem-vita.blogspot.com/2011/07/frederick-franck.html. Thanks!

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.

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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. 

You have read this article Existence / Fernando Del Paso / Mexican Artists / Mexican Writers / Music / Novel / novelist / painting / Perspective / Poet / poetry / Questions / Sculptor / Space / time / Universe with the title Perspective. You can bookmark this page URL https://gem-vita.blogspot.com/2011/05/fernando-del-paso.html. Thanks!

Eric Fischl

"What experience has shown me is that it takes your life to become an artist."

— Eric Fischl

American Artist

1948 -

Becoming a painter, a poet, or a novelist takes a lifetime.  We are always in a state of becoming.  If we stop growing and changing, if we plateau, we die as artists.  We are on a journey.  The work we leave behind is the record of our journey.

Where are you on your artistic journey?  What challenges are you facing today?  What challenges have you learned to overcome?  What are your dreams for tomorrow?  What paths have you taken?  What roads have you avoided?

Don't despair if you feel you have lost your way.  Maybe you have just taken a detour and you will soon find your way again.  What we sometimes feel are the wrong roads turn out to be the right roads in the end.  We often cannot see the forest because of the trees.  Climb up the nearest tree and your world will change.  

I often hear people complaining about the weather.  It's too cloudy.  Too rainy.  Too cold.  Too hot.  Can't see the sun.  Yet if we get in an airplane and fly above the clouds, the sun is there.  It is always there.  So don't become discouraged.  Instead change your perspective.

Here is Eric Fischl talking about one of his paintings.

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Theodore Roethke

"Being, not doing, is my first joy."

— Theodore Roethke

American Poet

1908 - 1963

 

I must confess that being is very difficult for me.  For years I have been caught up in the culture of doing.  Setting goals and working to achieve my goals.  I find it very difficult to sit and just be.  I must at the very least doodle and who knows maybe my doodles will one day be famous.  We can dream can't we!  If I go on vacation, it often takes me a week to relax and forget my day job.  But I still feel I must be doing something.  Writing.  Drawing.  Producing something.  Rarely can I just be.

How about you?  Are you caught up in the culture of doing or have you learned like Roethke to enjoy just being?

Here is my favorite Theodore Roethke poem.  I love the first three lines.  This is a poem to be read outloud.  Listen to the interaction of sounds.

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.



We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.



Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.



Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me, so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.



This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

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