Fresh Horses
Imagination as a blueprint blinds creative intelligence.
My friend, Bill Allen, used to be a school principle in California. One day, he decided to hold the weekly fire drill at recess. To his utter horror, all the kids followed instructions to the letter and ran back into their classrooms, because that’s where the fire drill map started !
You may have been taught [...]
How words can 60% impair or 300% enhance perception.
Have you ever talked so much about a work of art you were just starting that you lost most of your enthusiasm before it was even finished? You can stop berating yourself for letting your enthusiasm run away with your juice. It’s all a matter of timing.
Salaam is the Arabic word usually translated into English [...]
How impatience can destroy great creations.
“Once I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree, just as the butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out,” confessed a friend. “I waited a while, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over and breathed on it to warm it.
“I warmed [...]
Are artists flaky by nature ?
Can you afford to be an artist in this age of global warming, insanely rising gas prices, ever expanding technology, and the constant need to keep on top of your own life’s details in an orderly fashion ?
Has art become a frill for the flaky ?
I was sideswiped by this prejudice recently: “Of course you’d [...]
Art illiteracy - Could be your saving grace.
“All children are born artists,” said Picasso.
The problem is we grow out of it - or more often we’re educated out of it, as we grow up. We educate kids progressively from the waist up, then we concentrate on the head and slightly to one side.
Does creativity equal academic ability ?
All intelligence tests are [...]
How to turn a sabotaging inner critic into an ally.
If you have an inner critic, you probably know how judgment can debilitate creativity. You could tell yourself many stories of why you’re blocked in creative work at times, but the real reason may lie in your past experiences.
Whatever the cause, the automatic response to fear is avoidance. And who could blame you [...]
Giving birth to art has to be a gamble.
What will she say about her husband’s insanity, Jack wonders. . . then he marvels at her stunning choice of words. He couldn’t have made it up himself ! Yet, Jack sits at his word processor, and watches to see what will come out of the mouths of his characters in the book [...]
2 comments
A spring tonic to renew your creative faith.
If the slow start to spring reflects your own artistic lack of umph, here’s a spring tonic.
You might think you cannot make a painting if you can’t draw anything. Or, you can work endlessly on a piece and it seems to go nowhere, or stay unresolved. If you have just finished a [...]
Does following your heart mean leading with your feelings ?
Blackberry bushes left too long without picking, or being cut back, can become a tangle of vines that keeps us trapped inside or outside our cabin. By then we can’t even reach the berries, and the birds get them all.
While most of us are aware of our own feeling natures, [...]
Is a picture worth a mere thousand words ?
Back home from Marrakech with love, this article shares with you some of the sensory feast, in far less than a thousand words.
Is a picture worth a mere thousand words ?
Our relentless desire to explain everything that happens may well distinguish us from fruit flies, but it can also kill our buzz.
When I first [...]