Evolution is the way a poem happens for me. I don't know what the poem is about until I'm finished writing. The poem evolves as I write. I know there are writers who outline everything they do. They know what they are going to write every step of the way. For me, it does not work. I like not knowing. The excitement is in the writing. The same thing happens when I write a story or a novel. Only at the end do I know what I was writing about. And even then I might not be sure.
When I travel I am the same way. I want to discover new places. My wife and I once were on a trip with another couple. They had everything planned down to the minute and became upset if we deviated from the plan because it put them behind schedule. I can't travel that way. The joy is in the discovery.
Art for me is also about discovery. When I draw a mask, I never know what a mask will look like until I am finished. The joy is in the process of creation. The joy is in not knowing where you are going.
Zentangle 2016
I have been studying Zentangle, a meditative art form, for the last four years. A basic principle of Zentangle art is that you don't plan your work. The fun is in the exploration — of discovering where you should go.
One of the things I have learned over the years is that creative leaders have many different ways of working. What works for one person does not work for another. How do you work? Do you map out your story in advance of writing it? Do you know what your painting will look like before you start painting it? Are you confined by the expectations of yourself or others?
Growing up in a conservative Mennonite family, I was not exposed to art as a child. My maternal grandfather even forbid photographs and television. My parents did not buy a TV until after he died.
The Garden 2
Joan Miro
My first exposure to art came my freshman year in college where in one of my classes we had to choose an artist to study. I chose Joan Miro, a Spanish artist, and his paintings planted in my soul a love of art. I had an opportunity to study art history about 30 years later and fell in love with several painters including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Eastman Johnson, Edvard Munch and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. When you fall in love with a painting, you come back to it again and again for it to refresh your soul.
A great novel stays with you long after you have read it. My all time favorite novel is Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I first read it college and have read it 3 times since.
How many times do you listen to the same piece of music over and over. And each time you hear it years later, it brings back waves of emotion. Roberta Flack, Harry Chapin and Kris Kristofferson remain some of my favorite singers more than 40 years after I first heard them.
Artists, musicians and writers all plant seeds with their works of art. What seeds are you planting with your writing, your painting or your music? How is your art impacting your audience? What seeds have you planted in their souls?
Sometimes as writers we become caught up in the business of publishing and experience the hurt and pain of rejection. We become frustrated and sometimes quit writing because we don't think we are good enough. The need to write, to express ourselves, is not about being published. The need to write and to create is the gift in itself. Celebrate and honor the gift you have been given. Write for the sake of writing. Write for the sake of the gift.
The same can be said of painting and any of the other forms of creative expression. Painting is not about selling your art to the highest bidder or having your painting hang in a museum somewhere. The art of painting is a gift to be honored and treasured. Respect and appreciate the gift that you have been given.
We are in charge of our lives. We make choices every day that lead us where we want to be. Life is like a canvas and we are the artists of our lives. We paint the person we want to be. Or we paint the person we think we should be. Or we paint the person we think others want us to be.
Are you painting the life you want? Have you chosen a large enough canvas? Are you too stingy with the paint? What color are you painting on the canvas of your life? Blue? Red? Purple? Are you painting flowers? Or dirt? Is the life you are painting happy? Or sad? Or anxious?
We tell our stories through what we paint on the canvas. Others will know us by what we paint. They will judge us by the colors we use or fail to use. What stories are you telling? Have you changed the facts to fit the story? Or have you altered the story to fit the facts? Are the pictures of your life filled with people? Or animals? Or is your life a landscape empty of people and animals? Do you prefer the solitude of the mountains or the splashing of waves against the shore?
Are you timid in how you approach life? Or do you rush full speed ahead and ignore the red flags popping up every where? Do you splash the paint on the canvas or do you make tiny delicate strokes with your brush?
Can you visualize your future? Do you know what you want to paint on the canvas of your life? Do you know what color you want your life to be? Are you only painting the surfaces of your life? Or are you exploring the depths of your soul? If we look into your eyes, what will we see?
Every day we pick up the paint brush and add a few strokes of paint to our self-portrait. Is your self-portrait a true picture of who you are? Or do you need to change the paint brushes that you are using? Or do you need to use different colors that better reflect your character and inner beauty? Are you painting the picture you want to paint?
"The place where I had freedom was when I painted. When I painted I was completely and utterly myself. For that reason it was extremely important to me."
Do you feel free when you are creating? Is the act of creation a liberating experience for you? If it is not a freeing experience, then maybe you are working on the wrong subject. The act of creating should open you up and free your spirit. Life may restrict and limit us with work, family, housing and food, but painting and writing should take us to worlds with no limits or restrictions. We should be free to paint and write as we choose. Don't let others impose their ideas on your art. Be yourself when you create and let your spirit lead you and inspire you.
Creative Practice
Using this quote as a starting point, write for ten minutes every day this week about what freedom to create means to you. Compare what you wrote on day one with what you wrote on day 7. What changed and what stayed the same? Then share your best writing here.
About the Artist
My Mother
1952
Alice Neel was born in Merion Square, Pennsylvania on January 28, 1900. She was the fourth child of Alice Hartley and George Neel. After high school, Neel held a secretarial job with the Army Air Corps for 3 years and took art classes in the evening. In 1925 she graduated from the Philadelphia School of Design for Women.
On June 1, 1925, Neel married Cuban painter, Carlos Enriquez. She gave birth to her first daughter in December of 1926. Her daughter died just before her first birthday. Her second daughter was born in 1928.
In 1930 Enriquez traveled to Cuba with their second daughter and left her in the care of his sisters while he traveled to Spain. Later that year, Neel suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized. She attempted suicide several times. Although they never divorced, Neel and Enriquez never saw each other after 1933.
After Neel's separation from Enriquez, she had several lovers. One of her lovers in a fit of rage burned over 300 of her drawings and watercolors. He also slashed more than 50 oil paintings. In 1939, Neel gave birth to her son, Richard. Jose Santiago Negron, a nightclub singer, was the father. A second son was born in 1941. The father was Sam Brody, a photographer and filmmaker. They had a relationship for two decades even though Brody was married.
Video
Here is a video of Alice Neel at work painting. It is a silent film shot by her son.
"I don't consider myself to be a painter. I think of myself as someone who has used the medium of painting in an attempt to extend — give an extra dimension to — the medium of words. It happens very often my writing with a pen is interrupted with my writing with a brush — but I think of both as writing."
We define ourselves with labels. "I am a painter. What are you?" "I am a poet." We are born into this world without labels and when we die, our obituaries tell the world that we were lawyers, doctors, merchants or candlestick makers.
Kenneth Patchen
In my profile I list many of the labels that have defined me over the years: a carpenter, street sweeper, car hop, corn detasseler, hospital orderly, radio announcer, blogger, book editor, publisher, freelance writer, bus driver, sports writer, bookkeeper, policy and procedures writer, forms designer, marketing vice-president, corporate executive, professional speaker, facilitator, salesman, trainer, poet, storyteller, organizational development consultant, ad writer and communications executive. And that is the short list.
What labels have you given yourself? What labels have others given you? Do these labels define you? Do the labels tell the world who you are? Do your labels limit you or expand the boundaries of who you are? Do the labels allow others to place you in a cubbyhole? To limit your creativity?
Do you ever judge people by their labels? "Oh, he is just a bus driver? A street sweeper? A garbage collector?...."
Patchen said that he is not a painter. He is a writer who has given an added dimension to his writing. He has extended the boundary of the label beyond how most people define it.
Kenneth Patchen
Biography
Kenneth Patchen, the son of Wayne and Eva Patchen, was born in Niles, Ohio. His father worked in the steel mills. He had four sisters and a brother. His younger sister, Kathleen, was killed in an automobile accident when he was a teenager. Patchen developed an interest in literature and writing while in high school. He attended the University of Wisconsin for one year on a football scholarship but dropped out after a spinal injury.
After dropping out, Patchen traveled to the east coast and met his future wife, Miriam Oikemus, in Boston. They were married in 1934 in Pennsylvania. As Patchen attempted to make a living writing, the couple moved frequently between the east and west coasts. He permanently injured his spine fixing a friend's car in 1937. He underwent multiple surgical procedures and spent the rest of his life in severe pain. In later life, Patchen created may of his painted poems while confined to bed because of his back surgeries.
Patchen's first book of poetry, Before the Brave, was published by Random House when he was 25. His Collected Poems was published in 1969 when he was 58. Patchen was friends with James Laughlin, e.e. cummings, and Kenneth Rexroth. Patchen influenced both Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Many of Patchen's creative works blurred the lines between poetry, painting and jazz. He collaborated with jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus.
Video
Here is Kenneth Patchen reading his poem, In Order To.
One of the lessons I learned early in my career is not to explain my poetry to others. If I had to explain it, then either I did not succeed or the reader failed to understand. I would attend writer's groups where we would share our work and then the group would critique it. Some writers would keep trying to explain their poems if they didn't feel the group grasped the meaning of the poem. If you feel you have to explain your poem to the reader, then you failed to write a successful poem.
I think the same is true of any art form. You don't need to explain your work. A painter shouldn't explain the meaning of his painting. The viewer has the responsibility in the communication exchange to study the work to the best of his ability just as the reader also has some responsibility. It is a two way street.
Biography
Charles Demuth was born in Lancaster, PA where he lived and worked for much of his life. He suffered from both lameness and severe diabetes for most of his life. He graduated from the Franklin and Marshall Academy, an all-male prep school, and studied art at the Drexel Institute and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. While Demuth studied and painted in Philadelphia, New York, Paris and Bermuda, he created most of his mature work in a second floor studio in the house he shared with his mother in Lancaster. The house is now the Demuth Museum.
Cross-Pollination
Artists often influence each other. In this case, the painter, Charles Demuth, was inspired by a poem of his friend, William Carlos Williams.
