Monday, September 19, 2005

Paint or Draw Like Anybody

Anyone can paint, draw, sketch, or sculpt.

Not anyone will.

Children have no problem doing this, but for most adults the trip through school and road to adulthood forced any sense of being free to make art out of them.

Why?

Creativity is not encouraged in most schooling. Not all but most.

Adults are supposed to act like adults. No silly painting allowed.

Fear. Being afraid that what you create is not up to standards.

Cultural expectations. Some cultures expect students to regurgitate what the teacher teaches...it's harder and a heck of lot more fun, to learn to "think" than to "repeat".


________________________________


There are a 101 reasons why we need creative people in this world.

From the personal to the global.

One of the competitive advantages American's have had over some other cultures is our ability to create rather than copy.

A good way to foster your own creativity is to let go of those fears about not being good enough to create art and go for it.

Get a box of crayons, a watercolor set, pencils, clay or whatever you like and have fun. I think you will find that after awhile you open up to some playfulness you always had inside you which then leads to creative ideas. Who knows you might have the solution to problems on a personal, local or even global scale, locked inside you.

This creative for the sake of creativity, not creating art to display or sell; although not to say that might be an outcome for a few, it's not the main point.

Art as I'm using the word is a product of human creativity. That product may be "beautiful" or not. There is no requirement for beauty, since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, only that the work be creative. If the work makes the creator or viewer think outside the rut, that gets you bonus points.

________________________________


Live Long and Tinker is a relevent article, from today's MIT Technology Review, for those of us getting a little long in the tooth.