Goodness! Is it February already?! Hard to believe we're already into the second month of the year. It's a busy time here in my studio. February, has traditionally been a popular month for workshops for me and I am teaching three in the next two weeks.
I've been making art, but a good chunk of it has been for publication so I can't share it just now. I've also been busy writing, which I love to do. Speaking of writing, it's come to my attention that before too long, I will reach my 1000th post! Can you believe it? When I started this blog, blogging wasn't as mainstream as it is now. Incredibly, that was just 4 years ago! How quickly things change. I'll have to think up something special for my 1000th post when the time comes.
A few weeks ago, a friend pointed me towards an online video of a talk given by Rice Freeman Zachary on Google Authors. It's here and you might want to check it out. Essentially she talks about her experiences with interviewing other artists about creativity for her book, Living the Creative Life . I was interested in what she had to say so I ran the video while I was working in my studio and listened.
One thing she talked about was how one artist said he felt that everyone was creative and that he feels creativity gets expressed through whatever each person's gift happens to be. I started thinking about it, turning that idea over and over in my mind like a small pebble and the more I thought about it, the more I agreed. I thought about it like this:
One of my favourite movies of all time is Apollo 13. The reason I love the movie so much is that when the space ship gets in trouble, the NASA engineers have to use their deductive reasoning and problem solving skills to figure out how to get the astronauts back safely. Every time I watch that movie, I am awed that men who have never been in space can figure out exactly what to do. It's fancy mathematics that I couldn't even begin to understand-I'm an artist after all, not a rocket scientist, but those guys worked the problem and somehow managed to solve it. It boggles my mind.
When I think about that movie, I see the creativity of science and I have to agree that this is creativity being expressed in the way that these men were gifted. We always think of science as such a left brain thing. Science and math are not traditionally what we would think of as creative-they don't involve paint or prose, music or stage lights, but it's creativity just the same.
I love architecture and I have often wondered why that is. Now I realize that it's because it's the genius of both the mathematical and artistic world coming together to create something of both beauty and integrity. One of my own personal heroes is Leonardo Da Vinci and there is no more perfect example of both the left and right brain thinking. That man was creative with every fibre of his being. He was fuel by an insatiable curiosity about the world and he never stopped wondering "What if...".
I haven't read Rice's book yet-I have to track down a copy, but I thought I would mention her video because you might enjoy it as much as I did. Happy viewing!
2 comments:
Oh, I love Leonardo da Vinci! I would love to see his sketchbooks.
Rice's book is great fun and inspiring. Worth tracking down.
One of my favorite artists and people was an architect. He was a visionary and could put together the schema to build what he dreamed! Amazing person. I believe we all have the capacity to build what we dream (or in my case, something similar. LOL) whether it's paintings, sculpture, clothing, jewelry, buildings, cakes, or arranging furniture. Thanks for the link, L. I'm going to watch it for sure.
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