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The artist who can’t draw

A guy by the name of Roy Simmons once said this quote, “Most artists can’t draw”.  Seth Godin wrote about the same idea in Linchpin.  And I couldn’t agree more.

The blogger who writes the prolific blog post that brings you back to her website day after day after day. She is definitely an artist.  The musician who can write a song that makes you cry. The lawyer who can change the hearts and minds of a jury of people who don’t like him from the beginning (think: final scene in A Time to Kill).  No question about it, these people are all artists in their own right.

An artist is someone that uses their intuition and creativity to do something that hasn’t been done before.  Something that touches the hearts of people. Something that might never work with the hope that it could changing everything if it does.

An artists doesn’t simply draw pictures or paint on poster board. The outsourcing company in China who manufactured the painting on your living room wall, those people probably aren’t artists. Likewise, the people who made the posters that are on the walls in your office at work, those people probably aren’t artists either.

On the other hand, all the people who push the status quo everyday to do things that are creative – to develop new website layouts, tell more compelling stories, design greener cities, build new business models, turnaround entire brands or start a movement with thousands of people from scratch – these people are far more artistic than all the people making the artwork for your office.  And none of them do any drawing.

What about you? What is your art?