Chuck Close likes to say that art saved his life. Twice. When he was a kid, dyslexia left him labeled as “dumb,” so he turned to drawing to earn attention. Art came to the rescue again when he was paralyzed later in life and his determination to create helped him through rehabilitation. This dedication to art helped to develop Close’s unique style and talent, allowing him to become one of America’s most recognized modern painters and photographers. Read more.
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Related post with more quotes: Your Creative Mind with Learning Differences
One consequence of abuse may be deep rage, and art can help deal with that anger constructively.
In an interview, SARK said she knows that art is healing “because of how it heals me and how I see it healing other people every day. Through art, we come alive through the deep connections to our souls and spirits.
“I’m talking about being ‘artists of life,’ not only visual artists. I believe there is an ‘art of living’ and that this art practiced heals each of us everyday in small and significant ways.
Why Boredom Is Good for Your CreativityThe 99%Boredom is the enemy of creativity, to be avoided at all costs. Or is it?
Comedy writer Graham Linehan, in a recent interview for the Guardian:
"I have to use all these programs that cut off the internet, force me to be bored, because being bored is an essential part of writing, and the internet has made it very hard to be bored."
Especially if you are a highly sensitive person, as many creative people are, you will be more effective in your creative life by exercising conscious self-care.
A former psychotherapist, Lisa Riley now provides Creativity Coaching. In her article “5 Ways to Be Kind to Your Creative Self” she notes it is “common for artists and creative professionals to be their worst critic. As creative individuals we beat ourselves up if our productivity or level of creativity doesn’t match up to our expectations.”
Telling someone how to be creative is like explaining how the color blue tastes. Oh God. Here I go. So you think everyone wants to be more creative? I don't. I don't think it's creativity most people seek.
Creative people think differently. But why? There is no magic bullet or single pill. We all have the potential for creativity, but there are so many different triggers that can broaden our minds, inspire, and motivate. Of course, there are just as many triggers that can shut down our minds. Since creativity is so important for individual well-being and societal innovation, it’s important that we systematically pull the right triggers.
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More perspectives of Kaufman in my post: Scott Barry Kaufman on Kick-starting Your Creativity
"I have thought Too long and darkly, till my brain became, In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought, A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame..." -- Lord Byron
Depression usually yields nothing but suffering. The same is true of mania. However, often depression, especially in its phases of resolution, does contribute to a creative spurt, as the individual resolves, at least for the time being, the underlying emotional conflicts. //
Byron gives a vivid description of intellectual, imaginational, emotional overexcitabilites, or just excitabilites. One post on the topic: Excitabilities and Gifted People – an intro by Susan Daniels. http://highability.org/537/
In a culture where being social and outgoing are prized above all else, it can be difficult, even shameful, to be an introvert. But, as Susan Cain argues in this passionate talk, introverts bring extraordinary talents and abilities to the world, and should be encouraged and celebrated.
Related: Susan Cain notes Bill Gates is an introvert, but not shy, and Barbra Streisand, who famously suffers from stage fright, is a shy extrovert. Cain notes, “Shyness and introversion are not the same thing. Shyness is the fear of negative judgment, and introversion is a preference for quiet, minimally stimulating environments. - From my post Creative Introverts http://blogs.psychcentral.com/creative-mind/2011/07/creative-introverts/
In her NYTimes article, Cain writes, "Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place…But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption." -From my post Developing Creativity in Solitude http://blogs.psychcentral.com/creative-mind/2012/01/developing-creativity-in-solitude/
Blog post at The Creativity Ninja : Written by Ali Luke
Any idiot can write a bestseller. It’s more of a challenge, surely, to write a unique, obscure, novel that no-one ever reads. Maybe a century or two after your (artistically tragic) death, someone will discover it and realize your true genius.
In his article The Creative Personality: Ten paradoxical traits of the creative personality (from his book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention), Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, PhD writes that “Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility” and that “Creative people tend to be smart yet naive at the same time.”
He says that “a core of general intelligence is high among people who make important creative contributions,” but according to the studies of Lewis Terman, “after a certain point IQ does not seem to be correlated with superior performance in real life” – including level of creativity.
David Lynch on being a creative polymath: "I started out as a painter, and then painting led to cinema...Then cinema led to so many different areas—it led to still photography, music . . . Furniture is also a big love of mine. I started building these kind of sculptural lamps. Then I got into lithography...And I’ve always been painting along the way, as well as doing drawings and watercolors . . . There are just so many things out there for us to do." [From Interview magazine.] // From my post "An Intense Inner Pressure to Create" http://blogs.psychcentral.com/creative-mind/2012/02/an-intense-inner-pressure-to-create/ ~~~ Book: Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity - by David Lynch. http://vsb.li/oCeztg
Creativity and Intelligence as opponent processes. By Sandeep Gautam...
Creativity and Intelligence are related, but also opposed to each other in a certain way. Traditional analysis of relations between intelligence and creativity have focussed on whether one is a subset of the other; whether they are correlated and found significantly more often together than by themselves; and whether one (high IQ) is a necessary condition or prerequisite for the other (creativity) - the threshold theory of creativity.
Noomi Rapace is the star of the new Ridley Scott film "Prometheus." Casting her as the lead character Elizabeth Shaw...
Rapace said that to make the character of Shaw believable, she felt the need to reconnect to her spiritual upbringing in Iceland, to a time when her belief system felt more certain. “I felt I had to face myself and find her in me,” Rapace said. “There’s a line in the movie, ‘That’s what I choose to believe,’ and I think that’s a key sentence in her life. She lost her dad when she was 9, her mother when she was a baby, and she’s been on her own. It’s like you have a choice: to either be destructive or to say everything happens for a reason and I just have to find the reason. She is driven by passion and an almost naive obsession to find out who made us.”
"Only a small percentage of creative people work as often or deeply as they might be expected to. What stops them? Anxiety or some face of anxiety."
Therapist and creativity coach Eric Maisel, PhD. also notes, “There are many different kinds of anxiety reactions. Sometimes anxiety manifests itself as confusion and a weakness of mind and body. Sometimes it manifests as persistent worry.”
Scientists have mapped the innovative mind so that we can remake our own in its image.
But no matter how imaginative our thoughts, we still must cross one major hurdle: our fear of risk. People tend toward safe routes, yet safety is not conducive to radical new solutions. Bezos and his wife not only had to come up with the notion of Amazon. They also had to be willing to cast off their current careers to pursue an uncertain future. Amid the financial and other practical and professional constraints of most workplaces, not to speak of other life concerns, abandoning a satisfactory but safe solution to pursue a new concept may be the biggest challenge to capitalizing on creative potential. As Bezos once said, “Innovation is disruption.”
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Related: Using The Skills of Disruptive Innovators
A crime scene investigation is underway to investigate a death. This is not an average death, this is the death of creative thinking. You see while IQ levels have been rising owing to enriched environments (the Flynn effect), creativity scores have actually been falling over time.
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By authors of the book Who Killed Creativity? And How To Get It Back http://vsb.li/NmGsb9
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Related article: Killing or Enhancing Creativity and Innovation in Business
Your Best Life in the Arts with Dr. Eric Maisel - In this 14-week class you will work directly with America’s foremost creativity coach.
Who Should Attend?
Fiction writers, memoirists, poets and nonfictions writers (including professionals contemplating writing a book); visual artists; performers; composers; stage and screen professionals; craftspeople; individuals wanting to create more deeply and more regularly; blocked creatives; people who’ve abandoned the arts and want to return; coaches, therapists, and other professionals who want to learn about the challenges of the creative life; and anyone interested in the creative life.
"When I am asked ... for advice on how to get started as a nonfiction writer, I tell them to start small and look around." ... "The overwhelming majority of a writer's time is spent wondering why this world is not as vivid as he or she once — agonizingly, deludedly — believed. To write is to fail, more or less, constantly."
Tom Bissell, in his book Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation. http://vsb.li/hfgjdl
Kristin Bauer portrays the deliciously imperious vampire Pam on the HBO series “True Blood.” But in addition to acting, she has been drawing since around age twelve. She notes on her site, “I have kept it up out of pleasure and also a needed sanctuary from the harder parts of life.”
Creative expression as a refuge, even a force for healing, is a motivation for many creative people. Creating can be rejuvenating for Bauer and other artists - and for anyone - also because it can be a means to explore and release deeper levels of ourselves.
'And now that she's got her own measure of fame, Tina Fey says she's more and more conscious of what messages her daughters...are getting about being famous and making their own way. "There's this Nickelodeon show where the boy band sings, 'I wanna be famous!' Well, why? Everyone just wants to be famous. The idea [to get across is] that being famous in itself is not to be valued; that's not important," she says.'
'If they wanted to become actors, says Fey, "I'd try and spare them from the life of an actor, where you only get work if someone picks you. You want to be someone who makes your own stuff. If you make your own thing, you can be doing it at a community theater or on Broadway. No one can really stop you. It's a better, more cool life." ///
Related: Actor’s Privacy and The Dark Side of Fame
Janet Atwood Describes How She Got Rid Of Her Fear Of Public Speaking In 30 Minutes With The Lefkoe Method...
Forms of anxiety such as this can hold many people back from expressing their creative abilities, and are often based on limiting beliefs. Eliminate a self-limiting belief free using the Lefkoe Method http://talentdevelop.com/ReCreateYourLife-free
As a child, you were gifted with imagination and creativity. Now grown up, you base your judgment on your knowledge and experience. How to think like a child?
"We have been constructed by schools and parents in such a way that for all problems we have a formula we can apply. This is what society provides us with in order to be efficient and independent.
Nine times out of ten, this is what gets us out of complicated situations.
But once in a while,if you could think differently, you might find some other solutions, easier and more effective."
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Related: Overthinking, Worry and Creative Problem-solving
16 different ways to spark more creative and innovative thinking in your organization.
Simply put, the key to increasing creativity in any organization is to make it start acting like a creative organization. Suppose you wanted to be an artist: You would begin behaving like an artist by painting every day. You may not become another Vincent Van Gogh, but you'll become much more of an artist than someone who has never tried. Similarly, you and your organization will become more creative if you start acting the part. The following are 16 suggestions to encourage you and your colleagues to start becoming more creative today.
Book: Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work, by Michael Michalko. http://vsb.li/Wb5XxV
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