HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFE THROUGH ART
I have taught hundreds of students over the past fifty years at community colleges, private schools, and private studios. One thing I’ve come to realize is that many of us believe that people who are creative are talented. They are born with certain creative talents, and those who are not imbued with those special inclinations are doomed to an uncreative life. Example: “I can draw a straight line!” Or “I can’t even draw a stick figure!”
But they are wrong. What I have discovered is that we ALL have creative gifts. As humans, we are hardwired to be creative, and this propensity served us well in ancient times. Think about it. We invented spears to hunt animals for food, we invented the wheel to get where we needed to go, and we discovered agriculture by collecting seeds, planting them to provide food for our families. All of these and many more advances that led to civilization as we know it today were born from our combined informational knowledge and creative efforts: observation, visualization, problem solving, imagination, and invention. All these creative abilities improved our survival in the present.
RICH LEARNING
The parts of our brains that have evolved to invent, imagine, and solve problems are very much alive and well in our brains today. If we recognize our innate creative abilities and adapt them to our future creative goals, we see that we can contribute much to the enrichment of the human race. Unfortunately, many cultures, including our own, often discredit the power of creativity as an important factor of global unifying development, preferring more primitive and aggressive tactics such as war, repression, and political domination.
In the United States today, we like to think that supporting math and science in education ensures our dominance on the educational front. And, in the global community, in fact, these skills are very important for our progress. But if just memorizing and reiterating facts drives the education of math, science, and all other fields of learning, we are selling our students short, depriving them of the resource of creativity that will integrate them with global needs.
If academic studies were more deeply immersed in creative educational applications such as problem solving, design, invention, research and development, a richer learning experience would propel more successful students into the global future. A full spectrum of learning, combining the basic knowledge skills required by the subject combined with creative skills that require students to apply them, those skills to investigate, to invent, to visualize – this is the expansion of knowledge we need to address a deeper, richer and more compelling motivation to improve our real world and future.
MY CREATIVE EXPERIENCE
In my own life I have experienced this creative transition, having applied my creative skills to reinvent or problem solve in various jobs. in teaching art. I have worked to instruct and develop this same transition in my students who come from many backgrounds including: psychotherapy, engineering, medical technicians, writers, authors, retail associates, and financial consultants.
When I was a child, I would draw pictures and my parents and grandparents would compliment me on the little drawings and paintings that I did. They said that he was endowed with artistic talent. And, of course, the praise from him made me keep drawing and painting.
My teaching experience brought me into contact with people who from the beginning had the same impulse to imagine, visualize and create, but were discouraged from going further. Rejection from an instructor, a family member, a peer, or no encouragement at all, easily destroyed his fragile and burgeoning creative impulse. As I said earlier, we are all hardwired to create: it is the part of our brain that gives us the ability to progress in our lives beyond our daily tasks, past schedules, routines, and commitments to imagine, visualize, and yes, dream.
WHAT I TELL MY STUDENTS
When my students tell me they’d like to learn to draw or paint, but haven’t done anything for years because someone said they did a silly drawing or that real learning involved memorizing facts and figures and anything creative was just silly, they apologize; as if their need to paint or draw was a silly waste of time, even if they were so compelled to do so. I tell you that your search is great and noble because your total enrichment involves not only knowledge, but inspiration. I say that you already have the ability to create and that it is time that you begin to learn how to reap the rich rewards of your creative efforts.
This dialogue affects a broad demographic: young, middle-aged, and older people who need to improve their lives in some way. My younger students often feel disenfranchised by a society that emphasizes rote learning. My middle-aged students feel that they have missed something vital in their lives, that they want to create, learn to draw or paint because their work and even recreation have not satisfied them. Older students often feel like life has passed them by, even if they had succeeded and retired comfortably. These are the common profiles of the students I instruct and this is their main underlying theme for instructional need. What they all share in common is the need to use a part of their brain that needs to be activated and has not been activated through their lives and daily efforts.
CREATIVITY IS A PLACE
Creativity is a place we go. It has no borders or definitions. I know this location from my own work as an artist and I can see that location connected in the students. There is a palpable shift in thinking when this location is accessed. This place is a safe haven for inspiration, to meet your innate creative being, the one that connects you with your dreams, imagination and visions. It’s often a terrifying but powerful resource that feels oddly good and self-enhancing.
Much of the research and development in many fields, including medicine, science, literature, and computing, is done through the combination of knowledge and inspiration. Knowledge alone will not build a better product, idea, or world. Knowledge has limits, fences and barriers that often prevent inspiration from entering to move towards a higher goal or need.
A student of mine once commented after I gave him my “Inspiration vs. Knowledge” lecture:
“Okay, I guess that means that when I write, if I correct my mistakes by checking words, that doesn’t necessarily improve my writing. So, I can use a protractor or compass in my drawings, but that doesn’t guarantee that the drawing will improve.”
That comment has stuck in my memory through the years. Yes, knowledge is a template, but it also requires an infusion of thought from the free field, the swimming stuff, the primal pond where new ideas grow that can be turned into exciting applications to improve the world.