That is when I go to nature to calm my thinking, rejuvenate my playful attitude towards life. I also use nature to take a break from the noise and constant input streaming into my senses. My time out of each environment helps me to appreciate them both for different reasons.
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I believe that every living human has creative potential. People create and what they create is their life work. People use different outlets for their creativity. They range from being very logical to emotional. Some people do it to feel useful, make a contribution to society, to help people in need, to feel connected to their humanity, communicate or just to express feelings or experiences. It is what makes each person unique. Creativity helps us to express our inner lives.
"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance." ~Aristotle
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I had this odd dream...
It is summer and have opened all the windows to cool off my apartment. I enter my bedroom and there are nine giant flies all over my bed. Their bodies are black as oil with silvery highlights. They have long barbed legs. Their wings are luminously opalescent with green and violet streaked. There is a buzzing noise coming from the random movement of their wings, vibrating the whole room. My skin feels funny from the vibration.
They are beautiful and scary. I am not quite sure if they are dangerous so I go out to get a broom to shoo them away. The buzzing stops and it is dead calm. I hurry and feel my stomach tighten.
When I return to the room, opening the door, I see a beautiful fragrant flower there on the bed with them. It smells amazing, makes me think of being a child when my mother would bake cookies. Then all of a sudden I realize that the flower was a gift from them. I feel silly for having thought they were scary. I say thank you and they leave out my open window.
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My favorite trees are magnolias. They are so beautiful with their huge blooms and smell amazing! Here are a few images I shot last week when the blooms were at their peak!
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I love the Spring! Cherry blossom time is one of my favorite times of the year. Here are a few image I shot last week. The top one is of a weeping cheery.
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I finished the first phase of opening a web store to sell my work. The store currently offers phone wallpapers for sell and free desktop images. Both are downloads. I plan to offer prints and greeting cards next! This has been a long time in the works and it feels great to have it up and running!
The name of the store is ARTistotle. Please let me know what you think. I am always open to suggestions on how to make the store better.
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Part of the danger as an artist is to repeat yourself too much and form habits that restrict your creativity and growth. This is why so many artists burnout or never reach their true potential.
The other end of the spectrum is to be too open and not have a clear voice or consistency to your work that collectors can relate to. So, both cultivating a steady growth as an artist is as important as having a consistency in your work.
In my work I am constantly try new ideas and techniques of working. When I find something that adds to my work I implement it slowly over a period of time so that it is a clear choice and fits in with my past work by building on it in a way that makes sense. This way I can look back and see a path from where I was to where I am.
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Creativity is one of those words that can be mysterious in meaning for some people. I think it is because people have certain feelings and ideas about what it means to be creative. Some people may attribute their creativity to a trait that runs in their family. Others think that people who are creative are unstable and associate mental illness with creativity. People have all sorts of ideas about where creativity comes from and what it means to be creative. Some of these ideas can limit our use of this important problem solving skill.
Wikipedia defines creativity as: Creativity (or "creativeness") is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts. An alternative, more everyday conception of creativity is that it is simply the act of making something new.
By this definition everyone is creative in their everyday lives no matter what you do or who you are. People have problems and are faced with the task of finding solutions to fit their needs.
Dictionary.com defines creativity as: The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination: the need for creativity in modern industry; creativity in the performing arts.
I think that this also can be applied to everyday life. Most people become more creative when they need to find a solution to a problem.
I view creativity as a skill that needs to be developed like any other skill in life. The more you practice flexing your creativity, the more creative you get.
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For me, an artist's work is about documenting change and communicating that change over a period of time. I love how people feel such a wide range of emotions good and bad, how they are be both good and bad all at the same time. If one wants to see the good or bad in people, that is what you see. I try and see both and enjoy what is good. People are amazing and they never cease to surprise me. It is amazing what we each do by just encouraging the good that is already there inside others and ourselves.
For two years I had a funny cartoon by Johnny Coughlan on my wall titled, "Mood Closet." It was a reminder for me that I should not take myself so seriously and that I could choose how I felt based on the way I thought. It was a small thing that helped me change the way I thought and felt.
If there was one thing you could change in your life that would make an impact what would that be? And if you knew you could before you even started, what would you do?
The recent article, "Change Your Nature," in Psychology Today confirms my ideas on people and their ability to change their personality and their lives. It gives some compelling examples as proof that we are not hard wired and are able to change our personality if we want to. The article goes on to say that it has to do with our environment and ability to be open to change our basic ideas that support our beliefs. So, mom was right when she didn't want you hanging out with the 'wrong' crowd and that they might infect you with ideas of bad behavior.
The good news is it can also work for people in very positive ways. It can be something as simple as a work of art or object that reinforces good memories or nurturing thoughts. Changing our views can have a dramatic impact on our actions and how we feel. I think that two of the most influential factors are the people around you and what you permit yourself to believe as the truth. One part of change that is hard is when you out grow some of the people around you. People either tend to grow together or apart in their beliefs.
So, that old idea of nature verses nurture is still alive. Both are large factors in why people are the way they are. Genes may be the cards we are dealt, but what we do with them is ultimately up to us! Knowing you can change is very powerful knowledge. What will you do?
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Ambiguity makes art more interesting. It grabs a hold of our imagination. It is this type of art that can never be the same each time we look at it. As we change, we see that change reflected back to us. It is glimpse into our subconscious mind.
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of true art and science."
~Albert Einstein
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