Mayumi Oda

"Creativity is not a driving force.  It happens.  It creates itself and you have to be open."

— Mayumi Oda

Japanese Artist

1941 - 

When we become caught up in the day to day detail of living, we often forget about painting or writing.  I often suggest to people that they write or paint every day even when  they don't feel like it.  If you develop a habit of painting or writing every day, you will be ready when the spirit of creativity arrives and you will invite her into your soul.  You will awake from her visit astonished by the gift she gave you.  Be open every moment for a visit from your muse.

Paul Klee

"Color possesses me.  I don't have to pursue it.  It will possess me always.  I know it.  That is the meaning of this happy hour: color and I are one.  I am a painter."

— Paul Klee

Swiss Artist

1879 -1940

Writers paint with words.  Painters write with color.  Are you possessed by your art?  Are you driven to create?  Are you one with the words that you use to write your poems, your stories and your novels?  Do you go to sleep with colors dancing in your head?  Do you hear the voices of your characters?  Can you taste the lives of the people you paint?  

Marc Chagall

"In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art.  It is the color of love."

— Marc Chagall

Russian Artist

1887 - 1985

We paint our lives with the color of love.  What color is love in your life?  Love is about relationships and the color of love changes with the people we love.  Parent-child love is certainly a different color then woman-man love.  What color is friend love?  Or sibling love?  How about pet love?  Can you paint a picture of love just using color and no people?

Do you love creating art?  Do you love writing?  What color is the love of creation?  Do you have a passion for what you create?  What color is passion?

Henri Matisse

"I don't paint things.  I only paint the difference between things."

— Henri Matisse

French Artist

1869 - 1954

What attracts you?  What do you gravitate towards?  Do you paint children?  Dogs?  Landscapes?  Mountains?  What do you write about?  Crime?  Troubled families?  Other worlds?  Aliens?   God appears a lot in my writings.  Not intentionally on my part.  He just pops up.  When I doodle and draw, masks appear.  We are all attracted to certain things.  The deeper question is why are you attracted to what you paint and write about.  What motivates and inspires your art?  Only you can answer that question.

Wrestling With God

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Wrestling With God

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Albert Camus

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

— Albert Camus

French Novelist

1913 - 1960

My wife and I were sitting on the back porch today enjoying the autumn morning.  Autumn is my favorite month.  If I had to rank the seasons from most favorite to least, here is my ranking:  Autumn, Spring, Winter, Summer.  What is your favorite season?  As artists, writers and creative leaders, we are affected by the seasons.  I studied and wrote exclusively haiku for seven years and the key to understanding haiku lies in the seasons.   Many of us have lost touch with the seasons.  We live in heated and air-conditioned buildings where the environment is controlled.  The further we get from the farms and the fields, the more we lose touch with the individual nature of each season.  I like winter because it cleans the cobwebs out of my brain.  I love spring because of the renewal and rebirth.  Summer with its heat overwhelms me.  My brain melts once the temperature gets above 75 degrees.  Autumn, though, brings me back to myself and I reflect on the importance of life.

This quote from Camus, the French novelist, caught me by surprise this morning.  The phrase, "Every leaf is a flower," makes me see the world anew and I find it to be true.

Edvard Munch

"Art is the opposite of nature.  A work of art can come only from the interior of man."

— Edvard Munch

Norwegian Artist

1863 - 1944

Even in the most realistic work of art, nature has been altered and changed by the artist.  We as creative leaders alter the world, change it fit our perspective, our view of how things should be.  This is what makes every painter, novelist, poet and musician unique and different.  No two of us are alike.  Who we are changes what we create and what we create changes who we are.  We are not God.  We are different than God.  We are other.

Theodore Roosevelt

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

— Theodore Roosevelt

American President

1858 - 1919

Some creative leaders always have excuses of why they can't paint, or write or dance.  "I will get to it when I have more . . . time or money or less responsibility."  You have to make time.  Most of us will never have enough money.  You need to do it now.  Don't wait until the time is right because it will never be.  Paint every day.  Write every day.  Even if it is only for 15 minutes.  DO IT.  Tomorrow will never come.

Paulo Coelho

"We must never stop dreaming.  Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body."

— Paulo Coelho

Brazilian Novelist

1947 -

What are your dreams?  What would you like to do?  Where would you like to go?  What places would you like to visit?  I would love to visit China because of the history and the past civilizations.  I want to Japan because of my interest in haiku.  I want to visit Peru because of the Inca civilization.  I have traveled to 45 of the 50 states in the United States.  I have been fortunate to step foot on the soil of Jamaica, Canada and Mexico.  For me as a creative leader, visits to other places stir my imagination and allow me to see the world in new ways.  Again, I ask what are your dreams?  Are you feeding your soul?  Do your dreams give you nourishment?

Pablo Picasso

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." 

— Pablo Picasso
Spanish Artist

1881 - 1973

The time we spend creating is like a splash of sunshine on a rainy day.  It helps to cleanse the soul and free the spirit.  I am most enthused when I am creating.  Have you ever wondered why humans have created art, literature, music and stories?  What is the value that creative works bring to the survival of the species?  Sure, you can argue that technological advances bring value to the survival of the species.  But a painting or a poem or a statue?  What value do they bring?  Or is there more to life than the survival of the species?

Who receives more pleasure and joy the person painting the picture or the person who looks at it?  The person who writes the novel or the person who reads it?  The person who composes the music or the person who listens to it?  Why do so many later in life turn to the creative arts?  After the child rearing is done?  The career has peaked?  

What is the value of poem?  A painting?  A song?  A story?

David Campbell

"Discipline is remembering what you want."

— David Campbell

Creative leaders sometimes struggle with discipline.  They procrastinate.  They know they should pick up the pen and write or pick up the paint brush and paint, but they find excuses.  This quote hits the nail on the head.  If you are procrastinating, remember what you want.  What is your dream?  What is it you want to accomplish?  Why are you here?  Focus on your goals and you will have the discipline to do what you need to do.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

"Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them.  Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life."

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

Polish Novelist

1902 - 1991

Are you curious about people?  Are you interested in their stories?  Novelists and storytellers need to have a strong interest in people.  To tell a great story, a novelist has to understand people and their motives.  I think the same is true of a portrait artist?  In order to paint someone, an artist needs to see inside the person.  An artist is painting more than the surface.  An artist must paint the heart and soul of a person.  So again, my question:  Do you seek people out and listen to their stories?

The second part of this statement is even more important — being kind to others.  The world is in need of a lot of kindness today.  Kindness must start one person at a time.  I must first be kind before I can expect others to be kind.  Am I kind to those around me?  To family, friends and strangers on the street?  How should I demonstrate my kindness?  How do I show my caring?  Can you be kind without loving the person?  What is the demonstrable difference between love, caring and kindness?  Or are they cut from the same cloth? 

John F. Kennedy

"When power narrows the area of man' concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence."

— John F. Kennedy

American President/Writer

1917 - 1963

This is a fascinating quote from one of the most powerful and famous people in the 20th century.  The wielding of power narrows one's focus.  We usually think the reverse of people with power.  They can do anything they want.  But Kennedy is saying that power actually limits what you focus on — what you are engaged in.   Poetry, for Kennedy, served the purpose of broadening his focus and open up new worlds of understanding.  And I think art, music, and novels do that as well.  Our jobs tend to keep us focused on a narrow group of topics.  Reading books, listening to music and observing art can carry us out of ourselves to other worlds. 

Tuli Kupperberg

"When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge."

— Tuli Kupperberg

American poet

1923 - 2010

Are you in rut doing the same thing over and over?  Do you need to break or change the pattern and see the world from a different angle?  Creative insight comes from breaking down the old way of seeing and looking with new eyes.  Climb a tree and see the world differently.  Stand on your head and change your perspective.  Turn that vase upside down and paint it in a new color.  Paint an onion on top of child's head.  Break your patterns and visualize the world anew.

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?"

Marc Chagall

"If I create from the heart, nearly everything works, if from the head, almost nothing."

— Marc Chagall

Russian Artist

1889 - 1985

Sometimes the mind gets in the way of creativity.  We are constantly talking to ourselves about our work and usually this self-talk is very negative.  "Oh, I shouldn't say that.  What will my mother say?"   Or "I am no good at painting faces."  One expert says that 75% of what we say to ourselves is negative and this negativity hurts our ability to create.  We need to learn to use positive self-talk, to appreciate the talent we have been given.  Since there are enough negative people in the world who will put us down and criticize our work, we don't need to do it to ourselves.  I challenge you to listen to your self-talk and whenever it is negative, change it and make it positive. 

George Elliot

"What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?"

— George Elliot

English novelist

1819 - 1880

When it comes time to knock on those pearly gates and you look back across your life, what are you going to remember?  For most of us, it will be the people we've known and had some relationship with.  Will you have left this world a better place?  Will you have left the lives of those you love better?  Creative people, whether writers, painters or actors, often are known for their art, not their relationships.  I recently was reminded of this by the Jackson Pollock movie.  In his relationships with people, Pollock was a disaster.  I believe that an artist can be both creative and emotionally stable, but it takes working on relationships as much as we work on perfecting our art.

Bernard Malamud

"Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go."

— Bernard Malamud

American novelist

1914 - 1986

Who are your heroes?  Who are the people who inspire you?  We all need heroes.  Growing up my heroes were baseball players like Bob Gibson and Stan Musial.  In college my political heroes were Eugene McCarthy, Senator, and Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader.  The poets who were my heroes in those college years were T. S. Elliot, Arthur Rimbaud and Theodore Roethke.  When I got into business, my hero was Tom Peters.  I modeled my speaking style after his.  Harry S. Truman, 33rd President, is another of my heroes.  Who are your heroes?  Who has inspired you?  Heroes are important because they role-model what we want to be.  They push us to go farther than we think possible.

Victor Hugo

"Laughter is the sun that drives the winter from the human face."

— Victor Hugo

French novelist, poet

1802 - 1885

Humor helps to cleanse the spirit — to clean out the cobwebs in our souls.  Are you able to laugh that deep belly laugh?  To give yourself up to the moment?  What makes you laugh?  I don't always laugh at the same things as others.  I don't laugh at many movies that others find funny.  I enjoy humor in the absurd, in the contradictions.  I don't like humor that makes people look stupid.  I don't like humor that makes fun of groups of people.  I can laugh deeply and have laughed so hard that I have tears in my eyes and can hardly breathe.  Have you laughed today?

Pablo Picasso

"Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

— Pablo Picasso
Spanish Artist

1881 - 1973

We all are born creative, curious and compassionate.  Slowly the world around us grinds these traits down to the bone.  Our challenge is how do we remain creative, curious and compassionate into old age?  How do we hold on to that which is us?  For some of us we express our creativity through art, writing, music and stories.  What are you doing to keep your creativity alive?