This is a blog about closing the gap between our dreams and capacities, and how to live with a little extra spark.
At all stages of life, from students to mature professionals, people are coming around to the idea that it’s important, and even cool, to strengthen their ability for learning creativity to undertake all kinds of projects that don’t fit any kind of preexisting mold. Which reminds me of one of the best definitions of artistic creativity I’ve read:
“The main element of art is the uniqueness of the transmitted message. A Masterpiece is the correct execution of a unique and unrepeatable creative idea…
The artistic creation involves the realization of two disjoint processes: the generation of a message to convey and the execution of the work of art.”
How could there be a mold for that? Is learning creativity even possible? Whatever you answer to that, working to live and support yourself, and your family if you have one, doesn’t have to be enough, or all there is.
Think of people in corporate jobs, which are often great jobs, who want to paint but have no idea where to start. Or a working teacher with young kids who has no extra time but wants to start a new writing project. Or a high energy entrepreneur who wants to be able to think more flexibly to overcome new business challenges. None of these people have the time to go back to art school full time or anything like that, but that doesn’t mean they can’t take the leap and fully commit to creative projects of any scale, and finish them.
Most of us aren’t on track to be career artists, living off the sale of our artwork. But learning from those types of people can teach us how to bring that energy into our lives. This blog is about building a bridge across the gap between our ideas and our abilities, in real terms. You can’t just manifest this type of thing, but you can cultivate it.
Let me know in the comments one thing you wish you could do if you only knew how, or what you wish you knew about learning or creativity in general, and I’ll write about that, or maybe even make you a video. In the mean time, stay tuned for posts about the details of this project, and the research behind it.
Wow, You’ve raised some relevant questions that hopefully illuminate some mystifying attributes an artist must gather to obtain results. Even a thing as straightforward as to “fully commit to creative projects of any scale, and finish them”, as you say, can be difficult even to a seasoned artist. So many factors go into the execution and completion of any work of art, it will exciting to see how this blog comes alive. Rock on!
Hi Luke, thanks for commenting! Follow-through is an interesting issue for sure, and seems closely related to risk/reward theory and instant gratification issues. Have you seen Tim Urban’s TED talk on Procrastination? Could be a cool starting point for discussion, here’s a link.
Can you provide some successful cases studies?
Hey Miki thanks for your question. We’re planning to create as many of those as possible, feel free to sign up for the newsletter if you want to get updates about that as they come. In the mean time, have you ever checked out the work of Sir Ken Robinson? Really amazing person in the field of creativity. He’s a walking case study of a master creativity educator, and I’m planning some posts soon based on his work. I think his website is just http://sirkenrobinson.com/
Thank you for sharing, I will check this out!