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Cheryl Johnson-Managing Creativity

Cheryl Johnson is a Fine Art—Abstract Expressionist painter. She has been gifted with renowned artistic talent. Johnson primarily works in oil and mixed media. Her work has transitioned from being a noted portrait and realist painter to her current Abstract focus. She is also an accomplished sculptor and photographer. Her work is exhibited in corporations, galleries and personal collections across America, Canada, and Europe.

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From tai ho's blog lessons from a painter

Here are four key lessons I learned from  Lim Tze Peng.  http://woontaiho.blogspot.com



Lesson 1: Value the kind and generous – In the early years, Tze Peng, a self-taught artist, took part in group exhibitions to ride on better-known names.  In one show, organised by the famed artist Lee Man Fong, he didn’t sell any works.  One the last day, Man Fong told him one of his paintings had sold and gave him $300.  “It was a lot of money at that time and God knows I needed it.”  A year later, he visited Man Fong’s home and saw his painting there.  He paused and looked up at me.  “Lee Man Fong is a good man,” was all he said.

Lesson 2: Believe in yourself – Tze Peng once reluctantly submitted a painting he had done on a trip to Bali as one of 20 local works Singapore would be sending for a competition in England.  The Singapore authorities rejected it.  They found it “neither Eastern nor Western”; it did not conform to any artistic tradition.  Well known artist Cheong Soo Pieng fought hard for it to be included, asking the authorities to give the new artist a chance.  The piece eventually made its way to England together with the other paintings.  One morning about three weeks later, a doctor friend of Tze Peng called.  He said he had heard on the BBC the night before that a Singaporean artist who painted Bali had won a special prize in England.  Tze Peng rushed to the nearest newspaper stand, and there it was, a small article with his name wrongly translated.  But there was no mistaking it, Lim Tze Peng had won his first international award.  “They did not know who I was, did not care if it was Eastern or Western.  They saw my talent…what has not been accepted as tradition, what was considered neither East nor West, is now my hallmark.”

Lesson 3: Be true to yourself – Commissioned by a Japanese collector to do a painting of a plum – for a considerable fee – Tze Peng tried and tried but was not satisfied with the results and gave up in the end.  He passed the job on to an artist friend who did the work and got the money.  “He bought me coffee.  He was happy and so was I.  I will not sell something that I think is not good.”

Lesson 4: Perseverance will be rewarded – A painter all his life, Tze Peng won recognition only in his 70s and was conferred the Cultural Medallion, the highest artistic honour, at 83.  But he was not bitter.  Two years ago, he became the first Singaporean artist to exhibit his works at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, his life-long dream.
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Stream of conscious thought

Life sometimes get so busy that we forget to take time to breath. Then our bodies remind us that we are tired because you begin hurting somewhere. Usually it is a backache or a headache. Often you are Today I am so tired I have trouble moving easily. It is time to take a break, go for a walk or the beach.

Ah, better now. breathing.
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I think of myself as a an artist- painter, sculpture, photographer.

I long for feelings to be creative. When I begin creating my tension dissipates. The process is often labour intensive, however, I do want labour to be invisible. I want my work to have emotional intelligence and become visual poetry.  All of life is like playing with building blocks, adding, stacking, removing, sometimes falling, then building higher and higher...random shapes become forms and objects. Geometric melts into curves. As a visual artist I communicate through the materials I choose.
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Woman artists

Women artists

How wonderful to be a woman artist and learn from and admire female great abstract expressionists.
My work is just starting to flow and move more freely to color and movement and planes of color and shape. I love to peruse great works of art and women artists are on top of my list. I have so many favorites and never tire from looking at their work.
At the beginning of her career Frankenthaler was categorized as an abstract expressionist painter yet in 1960 the term Color Field painting was used to describe her work. Helen Frankenthaler, the lyrically abstract painter whose technique of staining pigment into raw canvas helped shape an influential art movement in the mid-20th century and who became one of the most admired artists of her generation died this year at 83. What a full and marvelous career. This style was characterized by large areas of a more or less flat single color which I love so much. There is “no formula,” she said in an interview in The New York Times in 2003. “There are no rules. Let the picture lead you where it must go.”
Her work to me moved Abstract Expressionism into a new world of Minimalists.
I love to look at these great artists work and then just let it all go and paint freely having been given permission by these wonderful artists who simply let their feelings flow. I aspire to work so expressively.
Joan Mitchell an abstract expressionist composes with long curvilinear strokes or broad stains of color, that move and bend and make a bold statement for women artists. Did you know In 1959 Mitchell moved to France, settling first in Paris where she maintained a studio for nine years. In 1968 she made her home near the town of Vethuel in Monet country, about thirty-five miles northwest of Paris. Her studio and home were in a home that Monet had lived in from April 1878 to November 1881. Perhaps France will be my next stop.
Frida Kahlo. Considered one of Mexico’s greatest artists, Frida Kahlo began painting after she was severely injured in a bus accident. How amazing to create such poignant works from bed. Powerful. I enjoy studying her compositions and marvel at her imagery.
Alice Neel
Alice Neel, I love her paintings of women unusually angular. Alice Neel was one of the great American painters of the twentieth century. She was also a pioneer among women artists. A painter of people, landscape and still life, Neel was never fashionable or in step with avant-garde movements. Sympathetic to the expressionist spirit of northern Europe and Scandinavia and to the darker arts of Spanish painting, she painted in a style and with an approach distinctively her own.
Louise Nevelson became renowned during the Abstract Expressionist period for constructing crated assemblages full of wooden items grouped together into monochromatically painted cubic structures. She worked with found objects imbued with a spiritual life that was informed by feminist ideals and Nevelson’s strong persona, which inspired multitudinous female artists associated with the women’s movement. Influenced by Duchamp’s found object sculptures, Nevelson sought to build abstract wooden environments, painted gold, black, or white. The narratives in her artwork originated from her personal migration history as a Jewish woman who relocated to America, and from her active life in New York’s artistic community.
Georgia O’Keeffe made large-format paintings of enlarged blossoms, presenting them close up as if seen through a magnifying lens, and New York buildings, most of which date from the same decade. Beginning in 1929, when she first began working part of the year in Northern New Mexico—which she made her permanent home in 1949—O’Keeffe depicted subjects specific to that area, bold, large, moving.
I have so much to learn and learning from these great ladies is so exciting.
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And now after learning, studying and being inspired I am letting it flow.
at Breathe, look up, look out. Inhale, exhale.  Draw the energy from the day into the core of your being and let go of the angst, the stress.

 Creativity is the ability to create new things in your life. For example, you could create new ideas, be inspired, have a vision and create that vision.


Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.
— Pablo Picasso
at Today I asked my higher Self to guide me to the one I should be thinking, reading, saying and I remembered the undeniable truth of the power of your thoughts and words. I have awakened my consciousness to a level where I take care to speak good words, be mindful of good thoughts and catch my self when I deviate. This simple practice has already changed my days in ways I would have never imagined. I love to learn. Did you know water at freezing level forms snowflakes? The crystals formed are like beautiful perfect snowflakes. Another observation; any snowflake you look at under microscope, is a hexagon. The famous six pointed star, The star of David; the seal of Solomon... did Solomon have knowledge of a secret we don't - or perhaps have forgotten? Interesting read.
at Fly, Angel, Fly - The time has come to try Now the day is done, the dream begins The slipstream lifts those silver wings Away you drift to brighter things Across a beaming sky - Fly, Angel, fly!