6 Surprising Artists

In This Bloutcher

• 6 Surprising Artists
• So Try This
  
• Announcements

I'm often asked which artists have been most important to me. My goodness! How do you answer such a question? After all, there have been so many. But when I think about the ones I keep coming back to, not only for their visual impact but for their insight and inspiration, there are 6 that keep rising to the surface.

Rembrandt (1606-1669)--Rembrandt's life and art are marked by tragedy and growing self insight and wisdom. His beloved wife Saskia died after 8 years of marriage and only one of his four sons lived to adulthood. He went through a wrenching bankruptcy during which he lost his home and his art collection. Yet he continued to work and his self portraits increasingly reveal his growing self awareness and vulnerability. His final self portrait, painted the year he died, brings him wholly and unabashedly before the viewer. No pretense, no ego, no claims. Only the man. Humble. With a slight glint of mischief!





Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945)--An artist and woman of great courage. Despite threats, first from Kaiser Wilhelm and then, years later, from the Nazis, she committed herself to a creative life that chronicled the lives of the disenfranchised and vulnerable. Despite threats to be thrown into a concentration camp she maintained relationships with former Jewish students. Her commitment to lithography as a major art form led to a body of work so profound and moving that I am often at a loss for words when I am in front of her work.





Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)--On the surface Morisot was a woman who conformed to the bourgeois norms of late 19th century Paris. Yet she hung out with and influenced the greatest avant garde artists of her generation including Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas and she was a wonderful innovator in her own work. She almost exclusively painted women and their children in a deceptively simple style that conveys both the mysteries and love of her subjects. As result she broke the gender barrier by setting the stage for women artists to gain entrance to the previously and exclusively male Ecole des Beaux Artes.

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675)--More than any other artist he combined the ability to be precise in his paintings while conveying the presence of ambiguity and change. Vermeer was a prankster wrapped in the garb of a serious painter. His paintings hold both the impression of order and the lurking dangers of change and chaos. His narrative brilliance is both seductive and profound. He is the ultimate above the surface and below the surface painter. Above the surface, order and stillness. Below the surface, change, uncertainty and the threat of mayhem.



Chaim Soutine (1893-1943)--Soutine fled Russia and a stifling orthodox Jewish upbringing and landed in Paris in 1913 at the age of 20 with pennies in his pocket. He hung out with Modigliani and Picasso in The Hive, painted slabs of raw beef and turned his personal anguish into painting as a form of exorcism and expiation. I love his agitated, worked and reworked paintings and the way his portraits leap from the canvas in a reconstituted image that is more real and vibrant than the original subject.








You--What you say? Me? In the same category as these great artist? Now that IS surprising. Yes, you are my 6th surprising artist. Each person I meet is an artist. Deny it as you might. But you are the most important artist you or I will ever meet. And exactly what form of art are you creating? Your life. Now art may not be the same thing as life. And we may not be able to fully create ourselves from scratch as an artist creates an image from scratch on the canvas. But the truth is you do create more of your life than you give yourself credit for and you have much more creative power than you think you do.

So try this:

First, take out a piece of paper and draw a line across the middle of the page. Then, above the line, describe in short phrases how you believe others see you.

Then, below the line describe in short phrases how you see yourself truly, deeply, free of others' expectations, reflecting your core wants and values.

What stands out about these two descriptions?

How can you use these two descriptions to call on your creative powers to bring these two descriptions into complete alignment?

Announcements:

• Kathy Jordan, Donna Krone and I are about to pilot our Coaching for Life Change Artists online training program. We have 13 outstanding coaches from around the country ready to test drive the program. We are aiming to launch the program in the fall.
  We have a mailing list of coaches, mentors and other interested folks to whom we send Action Insights every few weeks as a way to keep you up to date on our progress. Let me know if you would like to be on this mailing list.
• I would like to thanks all the folks at the NYC chapter of the International Coach Federation for their lively participation in my program a couple of weeks ago. I received an overwhelming response to my offer to send out a pdf of my slides. The title of the program was "The Great Masters of Art Reveal the Secrets to a New Coaching Paradigm." Please let me know if you would like a copy and I am happy to send it out to you.
• I am about to head into a rather busy time. I have mentioned that my two very average daughters are getting married in mid July to two very average guys, five days apart from each other and then Karen and I head off to Paris for five weeks. Then, September 19-21 I will be speaking at the Business Innovation Factory BIF7 Summit in Providence, Rhode Island. I will keep you posted on that event.
  

The Effect of Time

In This Bloutcher:

• The Effect of Time
• Announcements

The Effect of Time

I recently received an urgent call to arms from a fellow graduate of the Malverne High School class of 1960. The school board had passed a proposal to rename our high school after a well regarded teacher. You could see the computer screens light up across the Class of '60 Diaspora. From Florida to Indonesia and beyond the cry went out: Do they understand all the memories, associations, friendships, traditions, connections that go by the name of Malverne High School? And what in the world are they going to do with the school mascot: the Malverne Mule. Will they try to come up with a worthy alliterated equivalent? Doubt it!!

And then, in my passionate reaction, I began to wonder about the difference between memory and nostalgia. It struck me that memory is what we recall. The spotty facts of our past. But nostalgia is what we create from this raw material. Nostalgia is the emotional imprint that stamps its full, persistent character on our personal history. It's what cries out to us and calls us back. Memory is the stem and nostalgia the flower.

What are we to with this flower as we get older? Its fragrance becomes increasingly seductive, its call more and more melodic. It would be so easy to let ourselves be absorbed by its power and simply surrender to the richness of our past. After all, the future takes work and effort and energy. And do these capacities not diminish as we get older? So why not give ourselves fully to the nostalgic impulse. Do we succumb? Do we resist? Or do we allow for a few precious moments?

I think of Tennyson's poem Ulysses:

Yet all experience is an arch where through
Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.

When I look at myself I wonder how much Malverne I still see in me. I acknowledge a great deal remains. And then I catch myself. Allow, allow, I whisper to myself. Allow those precious moments. And then turn, as Ulysses did, To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield. I shift my gaze. New frontiers still call. But I do have a warning. Don't mess with the Malverne Mules!!

(To read Tennyson's full poem Ulysses, click here.)

Below is a photo of me a couple of years removed from high school. And then there is a photo snapped a couple of weeks ago. And then there are a couple of self portraits.












Announcements:

• I will be doing a program for the New York City chapter of the International Coaches Federation on Wednesday, June 15th entitled "What the Great Masters of Art Can Teach Us About a New Coaching Paradigm." To register and receive more info, click here.

• Also, it's not too early to join me for a 5 day program at Esalen, November 13 to 18. I will be holding a Life Change Studio in the breathtaking setting of The Big Sur and will be joined by my co-facilitator Nancy Fernandez Mills. For more information click here. Also, my wife Karen will be holding one of her remarkable 5 day poetry workshops at Esalen during those same dates, entitled Calling Calliope. Click here for more info.

• I also want to remind everyone that I am working on an online training program for coaches with Kathy Jordan and Donna Krone. The program is designed to help coaches integrate the tools, techniques and concepts developed in Becoming a Life Change Artist into their practice. It will be highly interactive and will include an opportunity to join our dynamic online community. We have begun to build a list of coaches who have indicated an interest in learning more about the program. If you would like to be added to this list please let me know. And if you know coaches who you think should know about this program please let me know. We will then ask them for permission to be on our update list. We are planning to launch the program in the Fall.

• An update about my plans this summer. I have two daughter, Hinda and Becky, and they are both getting married this summer. Five days apart from each other. Yes, you heard it right. Five days apart. To two great guys. And, then, five days after that Karen and I are heading to France for 5 weeks. Of course, this was not all planned exactly this way. We had made plans to go to France first. Then Becky decided to get married. And, well, Hinda thought it would be a good idea to jump in since the family would be gathered together anyway. So planning goes just so far. The rest is about being grateful.