Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."

— Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Hungarian Physiologist / Writer

1893 - 1986

This is one of my favorite quotes on creativity.  The creative person looks the world and  sees the same things as everyone else, but he thinks something different.  He puts two and two together and comes up with five.  He thinks what nobody else has thought.  What are you seeing today that you could look at in a different way?  Sometimes we need to rethink how we see things.  Are you stumped by a problem?  Take a step back and look at it from a different angle.  Explore other ways to think about the situation.  Find other solutions to the problem.

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Frederick Franck

"Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world."

— Frederick Franck

1909 - 2006

Dutch Artist & Writer

Are you rediscovering the world?  Is your art teaching you to see the world in new ways?  Creativity is a tool to help us better understand the world in which we live.  Through our creativity we are able to explore and find new answers to old problems.  Creativity is a discipline that changes the way we see.  Are you practicing the discipline of creativity?

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Maurice Grosser

"The painter draws with his eyes, not with his hands.  Whatever he sees, if he sees it clear, he can put it down.... Seeing clear is the important thing."

— Maurice Grosser

American Artist

1903 - 1986

Do you see the world clearly?  Are your eyes and heart open to the world around you?  Seeing  clearly is a key talent needed by every creative leader.  You have to be able to cut through the false and fake to find the truth.  You have to see the world as it is, not as others want you to see.  Do you draw with your eyes?  Each person brings his own perspective to the world that is why it is so important that you can see clearly.  Don't let the blindness of others blind you.  Open your eyes and taste the divine colors.

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Michelangelo

Portrait of Michelangelo
by Jacopino del Conte

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

— Michelangelo

Italian Artist

1475 -1564

Pieta
(1499)

Creative leaders see the world differently than others.  They see things that others do not see.  Do you see the angel in the marble?  Have you set him free?  Don't be afraid of what you see.  Don't worry that you may be crazy.  What you see makes you very special.  Trust yourself.  You won't lead yourself down the wrong path.  Believe in the angels locked in stone.  Believe that you can free the angels.  Believe that the world will be a better place because of what you created.  Believe in your talent.

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Otto Dix

Self-Portrait
(1913)

"Everybody thinks they know what art should be.  But very few of them have the sense that is necessary to experience painting, that is the sense of sight, that sees colors and forms as living reality in the picture."

— Otto Dix

German Painter

1891 - 1969

I am fascinated by the artist's ability to see the world in terms of shapes and colors.  It is like having a second sight.  What is even more remarkable is that the artist is then able to reproduce on canvas what his mind sees.  For a writer, the equivalent may be his ability to hear words and how they flow together to form a story.  Or maybe there is no equivalent.  How do you see the world?  Through the eyes of an artist?  Or through the eyes of a writer?  Can you see shapes and colors when you look at the world?  Do you hear the words in your mind as you put them on paper?

Parents of the Artist
(1921)

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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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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.

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Robert Bly

"When anyone seriously pursues an art — painting, poetry, sculpture, composing — over twenty or thirty years, the sustained discipline carries the artist down to the countryside of grief, and that descent, resisted so long proves invigorating. . . . As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression."

— Robert Bly

American Poet

1926 - 

I first heard Robert Bly read poetry in 1969 while I was in college and I still own a copy of his very first book of poetry, Silence in the Snowy Fields, which I bought when he was in town and is autographed by him.  He was majestic, expansive and seemed to blow the roof off the auditorium.  I fell in love with the poetry I read in that small sixty-page book, published by Wesleyan University Press, full of images of the midwest where I was born and raised.  Years later I had another opportunity to hear Bly read and I bought a collection of his prose poems, Morning Glory.  I own a number of his poetry books and his books of translated poems.  I even bought the book that made him rich and famous, Iron John, a non-fiction book I have never been able to finish reading.  

Here is a short poem that I love.  The last two lines have the feel of Japanese haiku.

Watering the Horse

How strange to think of giving up all ambition!

Suddenly I see with such clear eyes

The white flake of snow

That has just fallen in the horse's mane!

Here is another favorite poem of mine from his first collection.  This poem evokes the feeling of the rural countryside in which I grew up.  Anyone who grew up in the rural midwest will immediately feel at home.

Three Kinds of Pleasure

        

                   I

Sometimes, riding in a car, in Wisconsin

Or Illinois, you notice those dark telephone poles

One by one lift themselves out of the fence line

And slowly leap on the gray sky —

And past them, the snowy fields.

                   II

The darkness drifts down like snow on the picked cornfields

In Wisconsin:  and on these black trees

Scattered, one by one,

Through the winter fields —

We see stiff weeds and brownish stubble,

And white snow left now only in the wheeltracks of the combine.

                  III

It is a pleasure, also, to be driving

Toward Chicago, near dark,

And see the lights in the barns.

The bare trees more dignified than ever,

Like a fierce man on his deathbed,

And the ditches along the road half full of a private snow.

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Roberto Bolano

"You have to know how to look even if you don't know what you're looking for."

— Roberto Bolano

Chilean Novelist, Poet

1953 - 2003

One of the functions of artists and writers is to see the world in ways that nobody else does and at the same time help others to see the world in new ways.  I have often found that the best novels teach me new things about the world that I had not previously discovered.    Creative leaders may not know what they are looking for, but they will recognize it when they see it and they will find a way to communicate it to others.

Do you know how to look at the world?  What makes your way of viewing the world unique?  Do you know what you are looking for?  Have you found it or are you still looking?  Do you appreciate your unique vision of the world?  Have you accepted your vision of how the world should be?  Have you communicated your vision to others?

Here is a poem by Roberto Bolano from his book, The Romantic Dogs, translated by Laura Healy.

Self Portrait At Twenty Years

I set off, I took up the march and never knew
where it might take me. I went full of fear,
my stomach dropped, my head was buzzing:
I think it was the icy wind of the dead.
I don't know. I set off, I thought it was a shame
to leave so soon, but at the same time
I heard that mysterious and convincing call.
You either listen or you don't, and I listened
and almost burst out crying: a terrible sound,
born on the air and in the sea.
A sword and shield. And then,
despite the fear, I set off, I put my cheek
against death's cheek.
And it was impossible to close my eyes and miss seeing
that strange spectacle, slow and strange,
though fixed in such a swift reality:
thousands of guys like me, baby-faced
or bearded, but Latin American, all of us,
brushing cheeks with death.

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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

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