One of my passions is to read biographies especially about great artists. Learning about the attitudes, approaches and ideas of artists who created influential art, both past and present, is always insightful and inspiring.

I recently finished reading the 650 page Pulitzer Prize winning “de Kooning - An American Master” by Mark Stevens.  Brilliantly written, this book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in how an artist thinks. It’s one of those books I want to read again.

De Kooning was indeed a tortured soul who lived a long twisted life of struggle and pain. But he managed to transmute that pain into beautifully powerful works of art by persistently facing the canvas every single day no matter what others thought of him or his work. That dedicated discipline eventually made him one of the masters of 20th century art. Truly inspiring.

To be honest, there really aren’t many great artist biographies out there. How can anyone really know and write about what goes on in the mind of an artist. Most of the work is done alone. The conversation takes place with the canvas or other materials. The energy of the artist’s thoughts are transferred to the artwork. And it’s the artwork itself most books focus on.

The de Kooning book left me hungry for more. I just started reading “Matisse - The Life” by Hilary Spurling which was the winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year in 2005. It’s a good book also, but not one of those you “just can’t put down” as the de Kooning book was.

Here’s a quote I found striking from Matisse’s writings of about 1902, which is just as relevant today. It’s about the role of the artist and what it means to have truly original ideas.

“What you have to do is look at what you wish to express long enough and with enough attention to discover an aspect of it that has never been seen or described by anyone before. There is something unexplored in everything, because we have grown used to letting our eyes be conditioned by the memory of what others have thought before us about whatever we are looking at……………..  That is the way in which you will become original.“

It struck me this idea could be applied to any endeavor really - artist, architect, scientist, teacher, parent, blog writer etc …….. What would happen if everyone tried to approach everything with fresh, inquisitive eyes that didn’t feed into other people’s expectations? If nothing else, new ways of seeing would fundamentally renew and alter our approach to being and doing.

A radical idea perhaps ……………….. After all how many true “originals” can the world absorb? Food for thought……………….