Thoughts on Creativity

Usually it starts like this: a person expresses interest in one of the workshops and classes I teach for painters. They listen, appreciating. Then often say something like, “Ah, but I don’t have an artistic bone in my body.”

Of course, if they believe what they’re saying, they’re right. If on the other hand they’re just the tiniest bit open to an alternative… the shocking, impossible thought that they just might be able to be creative - why, they are. I’ve seen extraordinary leaps of original, soaring, even breathtaking artistry come out the most hardened attorney who had never previously picked up a brush. Not since the second grade, anyway. Belief. It’s everything. 

Paradoxically, there’s another aspect to creativity that comes into play all the time. It’s the story of the tortoise and the hare. You know, the tale of the hare, who had all the natural performance ability in the world but didn’t implement it. Against the tortoise, slow, plodding, who by dint of sheer sticking to it, excelled and won. The art world is full of such stories. 

Moral of this story: we open the door, just a crack, with belief and then inch our way through it.

‘To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.’

–Claude Monet

(The figurative work shown with this journal entry, ‘Antebellum’, can be seen in entirety on my other web site here.)