Creativity is one of my main interests and I have come across this book that claims that highly creative people do ten different things differently. The book is ‘Wired to create’ by @Scott B. Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire (2015). They claim that creative people have messy minds. That is to say, the process they go through to create a product is not linear. They will start with one thing, then another, discard one or both, start again, bring in new ideas, go back to the first ones and so on. The process of creatives is uniquely theirs and is different every time they create something new. Information comes from just about anything; a color here, a texture from there or even sounds or smells. Over the next few blogs, I will discuss their ideas.
As a painter and installation artist, I can say that this is true for me. I got my latest and best installation idea from some quilts that I saw in South Korea. They were fluttering in the wind in a window as we were going by. It was a fleeting moment but this visual mixed in with my desire to create an installation, having it portable, wanting something that is tall as well as something that I can paint was a trigger to a solution to my installation problem that I had been working on for the last six months. All this happened in a few moments and everything fell into place. You can call this creativity at its best.
Kaufman and Gregoire point out that ‘creatives’ (that is us) have diverse interests, influences, behaviours and ideas and they find a way to bring all these disparate elements together. Often the interests contradict each other but they continue to exist in the creative person. They add that creative people are complex and instead of being an individual, they are a ‘multitude’. The authors also add that a common trait of creatives is an openness to one’s inner life (that’s intuition and self-knowledge), a preference for complexity or ambiguity, a tolerance for ambiguity, the ability to extract order from chaos, independence, unconventionality and a willingness to take risks. Not all creatives have all these traits but a dominance of these seems essential to creatives. Creatives learn to harness their different views and draw new ideas from them.
Ideas for you on creativity:
One view: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/05/05/brassai-conversations-with-picasso-success-compromising/
A second view: https://www.thebwerd.com/compromise-become-compromising/
The good news is that creatives score high in the category of psychological health. They know themselves. Kaufman and Gregoire state that creatives adapt very well to changing circumstances. This is called plasticity; the ability to explore new ideas, objects and scenarios.
When it comes to idea generation, creatives are willing to put out ideas, select the original ideas and then select the best idea. The combination of working out ideas and making them valuable to society or useful. These two ‘seemingly’ contradictory ideas engages the creatives and stimulates them. ‘I wonder what would happen if’ is a common thought that creatives have.
I hope this helps you.
Doris’ website: www.dorischarest.ca
I have creativity courses and art courses online at: https://www.udemy.com/user/dorischarest/
For more information on mixed media by Doris Charest:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCltBfqSMAK0OOWeXaKGud6Q?view_as=subscriber