The Path to Creativity

On a walk with my friend the other day, we talked about creativity and the urge to be an artist.  I mentioned a favorite book by Lewis Hyde, The Gift, as we strolled under the cottonwood and elm trees, it was a hot, dry, dusty afternoon.  Lewis Hyde proposes that any work of art is a gift -not a commodity. Maybe that is why, in the heat of our conversation, I was moved to describe my recent impulse, to make art and give it away.  Acts of ritual, of gratitude, for the gift.  

Creativity is something I think about everyday in my studio while painting, in the kitchen while cooking, or writing now. To describe it, seems beyond words, it is an alchemical event that we have constantly, but can never quite put our finger on what it is exactly;  that je ne sais quoi, that takes place between our thoughts and our body, between our hearts and our hands.  It is a gift, a gift of expression. 

The author, Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote the best selling book, Eat, Pray, Love speaks about creativity in this brilliant TED Talk

She says that in the last five hundred years or so, with our rational thinking, left-brained approach to life, our culture might in fact be crushing our best artists. Instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us have the ability to be creative wizards.  We just haven't been educated and encouraged to think that way.

I believe our creative capacities can take us into an encounter with the transcendent. We have the ability to be, as Gilbert says, "lit from within,"  to glimpse the divine.  In the studio painting, composing a song or writing a story, the sacred moments only come when we are actually working at the easel, with the instrument, giving expression an opportunity to flow through.  You can give form to a painting in your imagination but it is only when the brush dances across the canvas that moments of revelation have a portal to manifest through, to be shared.  Some people say they have to be in the act at the same time everyday, on a schedule of solitude with their consciousness, for creativity to happen with consistency. Some wait for the muse, and some say they aren't always in a position to receive when the song is in the ethers waiting to be plucked.  I don't think the magic happens everyday or maybe it wouldn't be so magical, but it can be fostered over time, through instruction, discipline and desire.

Sir Ken Robinson says creativity is as important as literacy in education. I was fortunate as a child to have both, in a public elementary school, in the suburbs of northern Ohio. I owe the Director of Art Education in my school system, a big gift.  (Can you believe there once was such a position?) Marie H. Wolfe, wherever you are, you changed my life in 1962 when you created a Saturday art program for children.  Every other Saturday, over a period of some months, we took a bus to the east side of the city and learned about a part of the permanent collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The aims of the program were designed with the hope that we would absorb a sensitivity and appreciation for art.

I still have a copy of the then mimeographed outline for the projected content of the classes. One morning when we were in one of the galleries, working with methods of pencil sketching,  a woman from the museum staff asked if she could have the drawing I was making. I gave her the sketch and felt "lit from within," delighted that she liked what I had drawn.

So, my first gift for the gift, the exchange that inspired my confidence to keep on the path to creativity, happened that day. It has stayed with me ever since, a brief but significant connection with a stranger. I wonder what happened to that drawing and whether that woman in the museum, had any notion that her request would frame the artistic development of an eight year old girl.

Watch Sir Ken Robinson speak on creativity