Stephen Wilkes

"For two weeks after shooting the first group of pictures of Ellis, I was obsessed.  I couldn't sleep, I couldn't erase the buildings from my mind.  So I went back, many times, every chance I could.  What began as a one-hour editorial assignment became a five-year passion."

— Stephen Wilkes

American Photographer

 

What are you obsessed with?  What keeps you awake at night?  What haunts your waking dreams?  As creative leaders what makes us great are our obsessions.  They define who we are and whom we become.  Encourage, honor and celebrate your obsessions.

Photos of Ellis Island
by Stephen Wilkes
(Check out his book.)

Robert Bly

"I learned to trust my obsessions.  It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions."

— Robert Bly

American Poet

1926 - 

What are your obsessions?  Do you deny that they exist?  What is it that keeps appearing in your paintings or writings?  In my art I am obsessed with masks.  I paint and draw masks.  When I did wood carving I carved masks.  When I doodle, I draw masks.  We all wear masks even those who say they don't.  We change our behavior depending on the people we are with? I bet most of you act different around your parents than your friends.  And you are probably different at work than you are at home.  We all don our masks and sometimes we even hide from ourselves.

What are your obsessions?  What drives you to paint or draw or write?  What is the message that you must deliver to the world?  Do you trust your obsessions?  Do you understand why you must pursue your obsessions even if it means putting yourself at risk?  Please take a moment and share your obsessions?  I would enjoy hearing from you.

Marilyn Chin

"Poetry is my passion.  It is my art.  It is my love, it is my first love, my love beyond all loves, beyond romantic love.  It's as necessary for me as breathing is necessary for me.  I can't live without it."

Marilyn Chin

Chinese-American Poet

1955 -

Are you passionate about your art?  What would happen if you could no longer create works of art?  Would a part of you die?  For me, my writing is a part of who I am.  And I agree with Chin that it is as important as breathing.  If I could no longer write, I would not be happy and a part of me would wither and die.  I need to feel the creative juices flowing through my body.  And hear my voice speaking to the universe.

Here is Marilyn Chin reading her poem, The Floral Apron.

Alexandre Hogue

Dust Bowl
(1933)

"I was raised on a ranch in the Dust Bowl and I was there when the dust storm hit . . . . To me, as an artist, it was beautiful in a terrifying way.  I painted it for that terrifying beauty."

Alexandre Hogue

American Painter

1898 - 1994

Erosion No. 2 Mother Earth Laid Bare
1936

Sometimes our subject matter chooses us.  The events of the times we live in impact and change our creative output.  The subjects we choose to paint or write about are found in the world around us.  Those who have experienced war as a civilian or soldier will bring that experience to their paintings and writings.  Those who experience the violent wrath of Mother Nature will be drawn to paint those images.  How much has your creative work been influenced by the times in which you live?  

My writing has been influenced and impacted by the fact that I lived through the turbulent 1960's from the protest marches to the hippies.  I experienced the death of God movement and the rise of Black Power.  I lived through the decade that saw the assassinations  of John, Bobby and Martin.  To some extent I am a child of the times and that is reflected in my art and whom I have become as a person.

What external forces have shaped your art and given it focus and meaning?  For some the first decade of the 21st century will define their art and who they become.  For some global warming and the extreme weather conditions will define their art.  To some extent, we are all products of our times.  

The Crucified Land
(1939)

Sharon Olds

"Poems come from ordinary experiences and objects, I think.  Out of memory — a dress I lent my daughter on her way back to college; a newspaper photograph of war; a breast self-exam; the tooth fairy; Calvinist parents who beat up their children; a gesture of love; seeing oneself naked over age 50 in a set of bright hotel bathroom mirrors."

— Sharon Olds

American Poet

1942 -

From where does your art come?  As Sharon Olds says, it often comes from the ordinary experiences and objects in our lives.  Poets often find the smallest moments from which to form their poems.  It may be a simple conversation between two people, or a flower laying on a gravestone, or meeting an old friend at the supermarket.  The common place and the everyday is what forms the basis of art.


Where does your art come from?  Is it rooted in reality?  The everyday?  Do you take the smallest of moments and build on them?  Painters capture moments in time?  A brief look at reality?  What holds your attention?  Not everyone paints the same subjects.  We choose different subjects.  Some people paint fields and others paint people.  What fascinates you about the world in which you live?  What demands that you paint it again and again?


Here is a poem by Sharon Olds.  


Grandmother Love Poem
by Sharon Olds


Late in her life, when we fell in love,
I'd take her out from the nursing home
for a chaser and two bourbons.  She'd crack
a joke sharp as a tin lid
hot from the teeth of the can-opener,
and cackle her crack-corn laugh.  Next to her
wit, she prided herself on her hair,
snowy and abundant.  She would lift it up
at the nape of the neck, there in the bar,
and under the white, under the salt-and-
pepper, she'd show me her true color,
the color it was when she was a bride:
like her sex in the smoky light she would show me
the pure black.

Lucian Freud

Self-Portrait
(1985)

"A painter's taste must grow out of what so obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what it is suitable for him to do in art. . . . The painter's obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work."

— Lucian Freud

British Painter

1922 - 2011

When I graduated from college in 1971 with an English degree and no job, I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know where to start or what to write about.  In college, I had written poetry but no short stories or fiction.  I wanted to write but I had not subject.  I had no obsessions.  During a four month trip through western United States and Canada in 1972, I came up with an idea for a novel.  I decided to write a historical novel about John Kaufman, a Mennonite sleeping preacher in the early 20th century.  Kaufman would go into a trance and preach a coherent sermon.  People stuck needles in him to see if he would wake up.  While in Oregon I did some research.  When I returned in early November to Goshen I continued the research.  When I reached my hometown of Roanoke, I tried to interview some people who knew Kaufman and I was told to cut my hair and find a job.  I let the novel slide into my subconscious. 

Sleeping Head

I have taken years to figure out what my obsessions are.  In looking back over the more than 5,000 poems that I have written, a key subject stands out:  my relationship with God.  I write to understand God.  Even forty years ago when I wanted to write a historical novel, my subject was God.  I have been told by atheists and non-believers that I should not write about God.  And conservative Christians are often offended by what I have to say about God.  Yet write I must.  I am obsessed.

What are you obsessed with?  What drives you to paint and to write?  What wakes you up and inspires you to pick up your paint brush or pen?

Here is a video showing several of Lucian Freud's portraits and includes interviews with some of the people who had their portrait painted.