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Top Ten Myths About Creativity


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I agree a very good article.

 

Nobody wants to know I spent umpteen hours sketching out different designs before deciding a particular one was perfect for the project. Or the days I spend completing a project that had to be changed repeatedly as the criteria was changed on me up until the deadline arrived. Or the YEARS I spent lugging a ton of equipment around every weekend doing art shows. Someone asks me to do a project I immediately start thinking about the ways to go about it. I ask them numerous questions about what they are looking for. For my own projects I sketch sketch sketch read read read go to museums, galleries, art shows and then distill all that into my own vision.

 

People all like to say, "you're so creative it must be nice not to have to work."

 

ARGGGG!!!

 

Terry

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I taught elementary art for four years. What was I thinking ! All the snotty nosed hugs-yikes.

Any way, the grade 2 teacher said;"Tom, draw me an elephant."

This would require actually looking at an elephant, doing research,sketches,practise,and then maybe, just maybe,producing a quality drawing.

I said;"I am not a tap that you can turn on and off to get hot or cold water.I am an artist. I don't thinlk I used the "f "word, although I thought it.

I was eating lunch at the time. Although I am fabulously talented, I am only interested in doing what I am interested in. [That is a dangaling participle].

I AM NOT A TAP TO BE TURNED ON AND OFF. Draw your own elephant.

TJR.

I don't even draw elephants on my best day. I make pots.

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When I was still just a painter, I was at a show and had set up my booth next to an older gentleman who did remarkable seascapes.  As we sat there for four days, he kept working on a painting, and the most frequent question he  was asked was, "How long did it take you to do that?"

 

His reply was always the same, "It has taken me sixty-two years, several additional months and a handful of days.  I have been an artist all my life, and everything I do is a culmination of every effort--success and/or failure--I have made producing art."

 

I feel the same.  If someone asks you how long did it take, just think back to the first time when art--in any form--excited you and made you create something, right then, right there.  For all our knowledge and experience is based on what we have done in the past.  Not being content with the past forces us to work hard in the present so we will continue to work into the future.

 

Shirley

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Interesting, but written in a style for popular consumption.

(Not that there is anything wrong with that).

It is in the same style as you see in some magazines e.g. "myths about chocolate", "myths about fat" etc.

The "Myths" are put up in some exaggerated form and then "refuted". (Reminds me of "Straw man argument").

 

The fact is that people often just generalise or exaggerate to make a point but I think few would seriously hold to such extreme positions as stated in the "myths".

E.g. Very few people would seriously adhere to the "myth" that "Creativity is the preserve of a small number of people born with an almost superhuman capacity for great work".

Most people would agree that many factors are involved, e.g. talent and technique, nature and nurture etc

 

Similar with the "myth" that "To be creative, a work must be wholly original" .

People often mention originality e.g. in rules for an art competition because they want to exclude any copying, plagiarism or something boring and common, and because they know that copying something is not really original. I have never met anyone who seriously thinks that a work of art can really be wholly original in a "something for nothing" way.

 

Another example:

The myth: Limitations and boundaries stifle creative expression.

The reality: Rather than hindering the process, structures actually enable creativity to occur.

 

The so called "reality" statement above is not true as a general rule. The fact is that structures/limitations can both limit and enable creativity, it depends on what structures we are talking about and on how a particular artist is influenced or restricted by that structure.

 

Research into art or creativity is not an exact science like Natural Science, it will have subjective points of view and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

A particular researcher can assume a view in order to argue a specific point.

e.g. "She argues there are two forms of creativity but both are absolutely related to each other".

Nothing wrong with such an argument, but someone else can argue there are 3 forms of creativity, or 4, or 5 or whatever is convenient to make some other point.

 

Anyway, it is sometimes good to exaggerate, generalise or have a very passionate and subjective point of view because it stimulates debate, and I hope this article will stimulate debate.

 

 

 

 

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This would require actually looking at an elephant, doing research,sketches,practise,and then maybe, just maybe,producing a quality drawing.

 

I think a drawing of an elephant by someone who has never seen a real elephant can be something rather special.

The imagination is a wonderful thing. But I agree with the point you are making.

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I share your feelings.  So what is the PC response when someone at a show says, " I could never do this, you are so talented." ?

 

I always feel sort of insulted, like they have said I don't work or it comes easily to me. Like I just decided to pick up clay and the piece they are admiring simply appeared in their hand, with no effort from me.  Almost like my efforts have been marginalized.

I want to answer, "Yes, you could if you were willing to work as long and as hard as I have at it."

 

I try to smile and thanks them, but I am gritting my teeth.

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I usually have to labour very hard to make anything that is worthwhile.

(Some would say that I do not have much raw artistic talent, and I would agree)

However, some of my best pieces came from very little planning or hard work, when I just let myself go.

(Thinking & planning too much can inhibit your creativity)

I have also seen people who have never attempted a particular thing, i.e. making a figure,

and the first time they do it, they do it ten times quicker and better (in an artistic sense) than I did, with no effort.

 

So I absolutely think that art does not necessarily go with hard work.

It sometimes does, and sometimes does not.

Some people are just very gifted in a particular way.

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People say the same type of things to smart people ... Oh, of course you passed the test because you are so smart! No, the test was passed because they did their homework every night, read the books and were smart enough to study for a test. They don't just walk around knowing biology or whatever. The knowledge might come a bit easier, but the work has to be done. Success does not go to the incredibly creative either until they do the work.

 

I have people in my life who blow me away creatively ... They do cool things that never even occur to me. They take inventive leaps while I show up with the expected response ... yet these same people would never say they were creative. They come up with new ideas and novel solutions in non artistic areas of their lives but never consider themselves to be innovators.

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I just want to say ' yes I am super human' and proud of it. hahah!

I agree with Chris you might not be considered successful to the masses if you don't do the work.(is that good or bad?) 

I also agree that anyone can learn the skills but no one else no matter how hard they try will be able to create what I do because I am me and that my friends is talent.

Saying you have talent should be considered a positive and not some self effacing trait....  Why not have talent?  I can speak three languages and move between them with no problem, my one language only friends think this is amazing.  For me it's not, it comes so easily, it is a talent.  So rejoice in being talented!  Life is hard enough....T

 

oh and what I cannot do is play my banjo and sing at the same time, I don't have the talent...

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i envy you the language skills.  some of us are totally visual, like me, but cannot tell that a sound is annoying.  whenever the smoke alarm goes off, my kitchen timer substitute, i ignore it until i get whatever it is done and then turn it off.  and my daughter adjusts the radio to get rid of the static i never even notice.  so knowing more than one language is truly admirable.

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There seems to be 2 different worlds we're talking about. The first is our"right brain" creative side that does indeed see  & process far differently than most people can recognize.

This allows use the freedom to visualize and abstract without the bounds of conventional left brain reasoning.

The other is the left side that deals with selling our work in a world that has no idea why anyone would create anything, much less from clay. paper, wood, etc. These worlds exist parallel to to ours but most often invisible to the other.

On those rare occurrences where they collide(art shows)only a smattering of understanding can be transferred, on either side, hence the above statements on creativity  from those that have not a clue why we love to do what we do.

 

I look back on the life of people like Thomas Kinkade  and Jackson Pollock(drunk driving) that drank themselves to death, while the masses of consumers flocked to their "art".

They must have been trapped in the "success hell" of their own making.

 

I'm just waiting for my spaceship to get back before the fall shows. I'm starting to wonder though, if they said "we will return" or "will we return"

Food for thought or at least cheeto's

Wyndham

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Now I hear there is a new study out that debunks the whole right brain/left brain hypothesis that so many of us have believed for years. How does something that works, and makes sense, is used and taught as in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, be dis proven?

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I saw that study described on a morning show and what it boils down to is no one exclusively uses one side or the other.

Some people are missing the connection between the sides and this is not good ... but most of us are connected and use whatever side of the brain is needed for the task at hand. Some are indeed stronger on one side or the other, but we do use both.

Yes indeed, a breaking news flash! :D

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Now I hear there is a new study out that debunks the whole right brain/left brain hypothesis that so many of us have believed for years. How does something that works, and makes sense, is used and taught as in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, be dis proven?

My problem is that the right side of my brain is so HUGE, that my head is lop sided. Also, I am left-handed. I use that Betty Edwards book all the time to teach drawing. Do you mean that I have been mistaken all these years?

TJR.

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Here is my story for this week;

August,2013,

I am sitting in the doctor's office. Not my usual doctor.

There is a god-awful painting hanging on the wall.I see that it has been painted by someone in "Art Therapy". I ask the receptioist if these paintings ever get changed.

She said"Why?"

I said;"because this one is really bad."

She of course asked what I meant. I told her that there were white spaces all around the petals of the flowers, and that the person should take a small brush and fill them in.

She said that she had never really looked at it that way. She then left the office.

She brings back the female art therapist, who was very tall. [about 6 feet]. Now I am worried. She asks;"What's wrong with the painting?" Of course I repeat myself and actually show her with my hand, as if I have a brush in it, how to fill in all the white space. She said;"It's therapy!"

I said;"But wouldn't you want to teach your class some good technique?"

At that point, my doctor entered the room and I was extricated from the situation.

I was back there this week ,and I noticed that the painting was replaced. The new one was a kind of mult-colour fountain in tempera paint. But they could have used more water as the brush strokes looked dry and scratchy... I don't think I'll mention it.

Maybe I can find another doctor.

TJR.

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Now I hear there is a new study out that debunks the whole right brain/left brain hypothesis that so many of us have believed for years. How does something that works, and makes sense, is used and taught as in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, be dis proven?

 

My problem is that the right side of my brain is so HUGE, that my head is lop sided. Also, I am left-handed. I use that Betty Edwards book all the time to teach drawing. Do you mean that I have been mistaken all these years?

TJR.

I am left handed too. You should see the inside of my pots!

I taught with that book as well. There are some good exercises in it that do help people to learn how to look at things in a different way. The debunking of Right Brain/Left Brain may just be trendy. I think there are valid characteristics. Women have a thicker connective tissue between the two hemispheres. Supposedly this makes it easier for women to learn languages and be interpreters.

 

Marcia

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Back in the hayday of this theory, they had elaborate tests that the teachers took for measuring what quadrant our thinking ran in. My first testing was upper right quad, 3 years later, it was off the grid on the right. I always wondered what all of that meant.  I used exercises from the Betty Edwards books for years, the ones on drawing, and the one on color. I used modifications of many of the project/techniques to fit my methods and classroom audiences.

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One of the techniques the book mentioned and I found enlighten, was to turn picture upside down. This allowed the brain to no longer look for quick symbols such as a tree or car or whatever but to see the shapes as new forms.

In the world we have to make quick judgments on many levels just to survive.

Whether clay or painting, we have to "See" from a new POV to create instead of replicate.

The book maybe out of favor but the lessons on "Seeing" are as old as the cave artist of France. Does your mind "See" the mug or does your hand?

Which side does a dream come from, one or the other or both?

Why do we like John Baymore's work, it's far from practical. Is one side of our brain finding something the other side refuses to consider?

Why can an Autistic Savant who is nearly blind sculpt as well as Remington or Russel and without training?

Art and God have this in common, can't put em in  a box.

Wyndham

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest JBaymore

or they say, "i want to come to your studio and play with clay, too".

 

or "You must have time (to do whatever it is they want you to do) since you only play with clay".

 

We tend to sic this rabid dog on ourselves....... because so MANY ceramicst tend to say "I play with clay" or something to that effect.  Including the damn T-shirts that get sold and potters wear.  Until we take ourselves far more seriously and the work we do with the same level of respect as say a CPA does over their accounting skils and economic advice and outcomes.... the appreciation and prices for claywork will falter.  Words matter. 

 

best,

 

.........................john

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Guest JBaymore

I share your feelings.  So what is the PC response when someone at a show says, " I could never do this, you are so talented." ?

 

I always feel sort of insulted, like they have said I don't work or it comes easily to me. Like I just decided to pick up clay and the piece they are admiring simply appeared in their hand, with no effort from me.  Almost like my efforts have been marginalized.

I want to answer, "Yes, you could if you were willing to work as long and as hard as I have at it."

 

I try to smile and thanks them, but I am gritting my teeth.

 

You almost DO need to say EXACTLY that.... but with a bit more positive spin on it for "polotical correctness".

 

What we NEED to says far more often is that I've spent XX years studying this artform and have put in countless hours of formal and informal education and spent tons of money ON that education and the result is the work you now see before you.  It took a long time of hard work to reach this point.  

 

The famous HAMADA Shoji quote that is on the earthquake relief fundraising T-shirts in Japan for the town of Mashiko is a good example and a great saying .... "60 years and 15 seconds".  It is SO true.

 

People NEED to know that it does NOT come so easliy either technically nor aesthetically.  Until they do.... our efforts will be undervalued and under appreciated.

 

best,

 

......................john

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"We tend to sic this rabid dog on ourselves....... because so MANY ceramicst tend to say "I play with clay" or something to that effect. Including the damn T-shirts that get sold and potters wear. Until we take ourselves far more seriously and the work we do with the same level of respect as say a CPA does over their accounting skils and economic advice and outcomes.... the appreciation and prices for claywork will falter. Words matter.

 

best,

 

.........................john"

 

 

Hmmm ... Wonder if I'd ever use a CPA who said the played with numbers?? Sounds like an invitation to an audit.

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