Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts
Monday, September 22, 2014
Are you a Professional?
Let me explain.
Maybe you're a rock star and you wear all the clothes and you have the entourage and the fans and the houses and cars and "friends"...and you're feeling fulfilled about all of it.
Good for you. You're a professional. But you know you're not all that ...stuff. In fact you care very little about all that.
You think of yourself as a musician - but not with ego, not with pride, just with this internal...this is who I am. You know you can count your friends on one hand, your favorite house is the little house you grew up in in Indiana and no one knows how to find you there, and your favorite shirt is one you've had for years, it's very soft and says Haynes on the label.
What you need is to make music. And very little else. You don't make music for anyone...only for yourself. Sure, it is interesting and it pleases you that there are other people who like it too, if there are. But - it isn't a requirement to whether you make the music or not. It is inside you and you find happiness in expressing it.
But maybe you're a Rock Star and you don't feel fulfilled by it. The money is nice and all. You have great stuff and are surrounded by people who would do anything for you (as long as you are "successful") You don't know how you'd get along without it all.
But the truth is, if you didn't have to do it, you wouldn't. You listen to classical music when you get any time to yourself and wish you had finished your biology degree because you're secretly fascinated by the taxonomy, morphology, cytology, phytogeography of tulips.
For the sake of this conversation you are an amateur Rock Star - no matter how successful you may be by our society's definition of success. And not just that, the world may have benefitted more if you had finished your biology degree rather than played rock music with less than all your heart put into it.
So - have you ever asked yourself this question? If you were the only person left on earth, how would you spend your time? Would you still write music or play your instrument of choice?
Would you still do what you are doing right now?
If you would not, what would you do?
What do you get lost in? What could you spend hours upon hours doing without noticing the passage of time, like you did when you were a kid and you played pretend games?
And I'm not talking about spending time distracting yourself. I'm not talking about escape. I'm not talking about video games or the latest hot HBO series or spending hours on Fac... uh...social media.
Would you explore? Would you build? Would you pilot a plane? Grow vegetables? Make bread? Shop for the most amazing shoes? Work out? Run? Hike? Groom Poodles? Solve two mile long algebra equations? Re-invent the wheel? Climb steep mountain faces?
I know. You are NOT the only person left on earth.
But whatever that is for you. I hope you will consider spending time with it, whether you think you have the time to or not. There is the real world you have to tend to the details of, of course. But how much of that could be minimized so you can nurture and develop what you really want and like to do?
I hope you get to go into your world today and spend some time there. I know I will.
'Til tomorrow!
~Alex
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Inspiration Sunday
Good morning and how are you doing today...hmmm? Can you believe it is almost the end of
September? I am just amazed that it is
almost winter time.
It has been a very busy time the last few months for Mark
and me and I am looking forward to settling back in to my regular end of summer
season routine. Maybe I'll even have
some time to paint again.
I will have to make an announcement about my contest for
comments in the blog in return for a choice of a painting...I need to extend
the three month period I had set since painting is only something I can do if I have the luxury of time.
Not that I'm complaining. I have had time to sculpt and although that is my profession, I consider it a luxury all the same.
In addition to the new gallery in Breckenridge and Vail, my
sculpture is going to be in ANOTHER new gallery and I will share with you the
details of that gallery this week when I get some photos from them.
This new gallery is another Texas gallery - an addition to
the gallery in Fredericksburg, Texas, RS Hanna Gallery.
Since Texas is such a big state, we decided two galleries in
Texas would be okay. Plus this new
gallery has some very special aspects to it that are somewhat different from a
more traditional gallery. But - more on that later!
Hope you have been having a very enjoyable weekend and have
made some time to relax and that you enjoy today's quote and they provide some
inspiration to you for the week ahead.
Here they are:
Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement: for transfiguration, not for the sake of play. It is the quest of our self that drives us along the eternal and never-ending journey we must all make. ~ Max Beckmann 1884-1950
I don't demand that all work be a masterpiece. I think what I am doing is the right thing for me - that is what I am and this is living. It reflects me and I reflect it. ~ Louise Nevelson 1900-1988
We all name ourselves. We call ourselves artists. Nobody asks us. Nobody says you are or you aren't. ~ Ad Reinhardt 1913-1967
To be an artist is to believe in life. ~ Henry Moore 1898-1986
I feel anyone who does anything great in art and culture is out of control. It is done by people who are possessed. . . . Yet the whole exciting thing about art has to do with being out of control. It has to do with real things. ~ Nancy Grossman 1940-
An odd contradiction, if the layman were correct in his unconscious assumption that the artist begins with reality and ends with art: the converse is true _ to the degree that this dichotomy has any truth - the artist begins with art, and through it arrives at reality. ~ Robert Motherwell 1915-1991
And there are two sorts of beauty; on is the result of instinct, the other of study. A combination of the two, with the resulting modifications, brings with it a very complicated richness, which the art critic ought to try to discover. ~ Paul Gauguin 1848-1903
Philosophers and aestheticians may offer elegant and profound definitions of art and beauty, but for the painter they are all summed up in this phrase: To create a harmony. ~ Gino Severini 1883-1966
If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise if one is idle. ~ Albrecht Durer 1471-1528
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| Durer - Young Hare |
Come quickly. You mustn't miss the dawn. It will never be just like this again. ~ Georgia O'Keeffe 1887-1986 (to her house guests at her Abiquin House, 1951)
Wishing you a Sunday full of all good things!
'Til tomorrow -
~Alex
'Til tomorrow -
~Alex
Friday, August 22, 2014
Setting Yourself Up for Creativity - Pt.5
I am glad to be coming to the end of it all. Phoebe Mae Kittenhead Alvis actually put a stop to it by ending it with The Cat's Answer which you will see after the last punch line...
Okay - enough fun and on to the serious business of ART :) and more of the John Cleese creativity lecture. HooRay!
Now the next factor, number four - is Confidence.When you are in your space/time oasis, getting into the Open Mode - nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.Now if you think about play, you'll see why. To play is to experiment - "What happens if I do this? What would happen if we did that? What if…?"The very essence of playfulness is an openness to anything that may happen. The feeling that whatever happens, it's ok. So you cannot be playful if you're frightened that moving in some direction will be "wrong" -- something you "shouldn't have done."Well, you're either free to play, or you're not.As Alan Watts puts it, you can't be spontaneous within reason.So you've got risk saying things that are silly and illogical and wrong, and the best way to get the confidence to do that is to know that while you're being creative, nothing is wrong. There's no such thing as a mistake, and any drivel may lead to the break-through.And now, the last factor. The fifth - Humor.Well, I happen to think the main evolutionary significance of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.I think we all know that laughter brings relaxation, and that humor makes us playful, yet how many times have important discussions been held where really original and creative ideas were desperately needed to solve important problems?...but where humor was taboo because the subject being discussed was "so serious"?This attitude seems to me to stem from a very basic misunderstanding of the difference between 'serious' and 'solemn'.Now I suggest to you that a group of us could be sitting around after dinner, discussing matters that were extremely serious like the education of our children, or our marriages, or the meaning of life (and I'm not talking about the film), and we could be laughing, and that would not make what we were discussing one bit less serious.Solemnity, on the other hand… I don't know what it's for. I mean, what is the point of it?
The two most beautiful memorial services that I've ever attended both had a lot of humor, and it somehow freed us all, and made the services inspiring and cathartic.
And there you go. I - for one - am grateful that John Cleese created a world for us full of humor. Maybe we'll watch some Monty Python this weekend...that would be fun!But solemnity? It serves pomposity, and the self-important always know at some level of their consciousness that their egotism is going to be punctured by humor -- that's why they see it as a threat. And so dishonestly pretend that their deficiency makes their views more substantial, when it only makes them feel bigger.
On this Friday - I wish you some serious humor in your day and we'll have some more of the John Cleese talk tomorrow too. But no....
NO MORE dog light bulb jokes!
'Til tomorrow!
~Alex
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Setting Yourself Up for Creativity - Pt. 4
And now without any further doggie to do (or perhaps I should say do-do)...the next installment of Setting Yourself Up for Creativity:
Time is so hard to come by - isn't it? But I like his approach. Don't settle for a solution until you have given it some time. I have some very important things figured out just by sleeping on them sometimes. In fact any project that I have pressed on rather than continued to play with has not turned out as well as I had hoped.So when I say, create an oasis of quiet, know that when you have - your mind will pretty soon start racing again!But you're not going to take that very seriously. You just sit there for a bit tolerating the racing and the slight anxiety that comes with that...and after a time your mind will quiet down again.Now. Because it takes some time for your mind to quiet down it's absolutely no use arranging a space/time oasis lasting 30 minutes - because just as you're getting quieter and getting into the Open Mode you have to stop and that is very deeply frustrating.So you must allow yourself a good chunk of time. I'd suggest about an hour and a half. Then after you've gotten to the Open Mode - you'll have about an hour left for something to happen. IF you're lucky.But. Don't put a whole morning aside. My experience is that after about an hour-and-a-half you need a break.So it's far better to do an hour-and-a-half now and then an hour-and-a-half next Thursday and maybe an hour-and-a-half the week after that - than to fix one four-and-a-half hour session now.There's another reason for that. And that's factor number three - Time!Yes, I know we've just done time. But that was HALF of creating our oasis.Now I'm going to tell you about how to use the oasis that you've created.Why do you still need time?Well, let me tell you a story. I was always intrigued that one of my Monty Python colleagues who seemed to be - to me - more talented than I was - did never produce scripts as original as mine.And I watched for some time and then I began to see why. If he was faced with a problem - and fairly soon saw a solution - he was inclined to take it. Even though, I think, he knew the solution was not very original.Whereas if I was in the same situation - although I was sorely tempted to take the easy way out and finish by 5 o'clock - I just couldn't. I'd sit there with the problem for another hour-and-a-quarter, and by sticking at it would, in the end, almost always come up with something more original.It was that simple. My work was more creative than his simply because I was prepared to stick with the problem longer.So imagine my excitement when I found that this was exactly what MacKinnon found in his research!He discovered that the most creative professionals always played with a problem for much longer before they tried to resolve it - because they were prepared to tolerate that slight discomfort ...this anxiety ....that we all experience when we haven't solved a problem.You know - I mean - if we have a problem and we need to solve it...until we do we feel -inside us - a kind of internal agitation. A tension - or an uncertainty - that makes us just plain uncomfortable.And we want to get rid of that discomfort. So, in order to do so, we take a decision. Not because we're sure it's the best decision - but because taking it will make us feel better.Well. The most creative people have learned to tolerate that discomfort for much longer. And so - just because they put in more pondering time - their solutions are more creative.Now the people I find it hardest to be creative with are people who need all the time to project an image of themselves as decisive. And who feel that to create this image they need to decide everything very quickly and with a great show of confidence.Well. This behavior I suggest sincerely - is the most effective way of strangling creativity at birth.But please note; I'm not arguing against real decisiveness. I'm a hundred percent in favor of taking a decision when it has to be taken - and then sticking to it while it is being implemented.What I'm suggesting to you is that, before you take a decision, you should always ask yourself the question; "When does this decision have to be taken?"And having answered that - you defer the decision until then - in order to give yourself maximum pondering time...which will lead you to the most creative solution.And IF - while you're pondering - somebody accuses you of indecision say, "Look, Babycakes! I don't have to decide 'til Tuesday, and I'm not chickening out of my creative discomfort by taking a snap decision before then. That's too easy."So, to summarize: the third factor that facilitates creativity is time, giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original.
I hope today you give yourself all the time you need. You and your ideas sometimes need and always deserve that.
Tomorrow's excerpt - John Cleese addresses the importance of Confidence and introduces the role Humor plays in the creative process. I hope you will enjoy the next part even more than this part...oh and yes...some more doggie light bulb jokes...but I cannot stand more than one more day of them - truly! :)
'Til tomorrow!
~Alex
Monday, August 18, 2014
Setting yourself up for Creativity
But I digress....
John Cleese gave a lecture a couple of years ago for Video Arts about creativity and you can watch the video on You Tube or read a transcript from it here...over the next few days...with my comments sprinkled in (oh goody). :) Read on!
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| Photo-Art by Terry Wolfinger found on Fink Magazine |
You know, when Video Arts asked me if I'd like to talk about creativity I said "no problem." No problem!Because telling people how to be creative is easy, it's only being it that's difficult.I knew it would be particularly easy for me because I've spent the last 25 years watching how various creative people produce their stuff - and being fascinating to see if I could figure out what makes folk, including me, more creative.What is more, a couple of years ago I got very excited because a friend of mine who runs the psychology department at Sussex University, Brian Bates, showed me some research on creativity done at Berkley in the 70s by a brilliant psychologist called Donald MacKinnon - which seemed to confirm in the most impressively scientific way all the vague observations and intuitions that I'd heard over the years.The prospect of setting down for quite serious study of creativity for the purpose of tonight's gossip was delightful.Having spent several weeks on it, I can state categorically that what I have to tell you tonight about how you can all become more creative is a complete waste of time.So I think it would be much better if I just told jokes instead: you know the lightbulb jokes? You know...How many Poles does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One to hold the bulb, four to turn the table.How many folksingers does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer - Five. One to change the bulb and four to sing about how much better the old one was.How many socialists does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer - We're not going to change it, we think it works.How many creative art......You see, the reason why it is futile for me to talk about creativity is that it simply cannot be explained. It's like Mozart's music or Van Gogh's painting or Saddam Hussein's propaganda. It is literally inexplicable.Freud, who analyzed practically everything else, repeatedly denied that psychoanalysis could shed any light whatsoever on the mysteries of creativity.And Brian Bates wrote to me recently "Most of the best research on creativity was done in the 60s and 70s with a quite dramatic drop off in quantity after then..."Largely, I suspect because researchers began to feel that they had reached the limits of what science could discover about it.In fact, the only thing from the research that I could tell you about how to be creative is the sort of childhood that you should have had, which is of limited help to you at this point in your lives.However there is one negative thing that I can say - and it's "negative" because it is easier to say what creativity isn't.A bit like the sculptor who when asked how he had sculpted a very fine elephant, explained that he'd taken a big block of marble and then knocked away all the bits that didn't look like an elephant.Now here's the negative thing: Creativity is not a talent.It is not a talent, it is a way of operating.So. How many actors does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer - thousands. Only one to do it but thousands to say "I could have done that."How many Jewish mothers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer - Don't mind me, I'll just sit here in the dark, nobody cares about me....How many surgeons....You see - when I say "a way of operating" what I mean is this: creativity is not an ability that you either have or do not have.It is, for example - and this may surprise you - absolutely unrelated to IQ. Provided that you are intelligent above a certain minimal level that is.But MacKinnon showed in investigating scientists, architects, engineers, and writers that those regarded by their peers as "most creative" were in no way whatsoever different in IQ from their less creative colleagues.So in what way were they different?MacKinnon showed that the most creative had simply acquired a facility for getting themselves into a particular mood - a way of operating - which allowed their natural creativity to function.In fact, MacKinnon described this particular facility as an ability to play.Indeed he described the most creative - when in this mood - as being childlike.For they were able to play with ideas -to explore them - not for any immediate practical purpose but just for enjoyment. Play for its own sake.
Okay. So I did not sprinkle in comments. I think it interesting that in last week's posts we were exploring how other artists acquired their own "facilities for getting themselves into a particular mood or way of operating to allow their natural creativity to function."
The longer I work the more I know the importance of this. I don't always get the luxury of having the time for using my particular "acquired facilities for getting myself into my way of operating" but find that if I have a quiet mind while I am doing the task at hand (whatever that may be) that ideas still come through.
Like yesterday, while listening to music (I was painting the living room walls yesterday) one particular song gave me an idea for one sculpture...which spun off into ideas for two more. I put down the brush and managed to draw 2 in my sketch book but forgot the third while drawing the two! (I have to be quick about this sort of thing.)
What things do you do to put your self into a place where you are able to play with your creative ideas? Why not use the comments section below to share those with the rest of us? (hint-hint).
Tomorrow is more of the Cleese transcript.
'Til then! I wish you hours of uninterrupted play today :)
~Alex
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