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.