HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFE THROUGH ART
I have taught hundreds of students over the past fifty years in community colleges, private schools, and private studies. One thing that I have come to realize is that many of us believe that creative people are talented. They are born with certain creative talents and those who are not imbued with those special inclinations are doomed to a non-creative 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 are ALL gifted with creativity. As human beings, we are hardwired to be creative and this propensity served us well in ancient times. Think about it. We invented spears to hunt animals to eat, we invented the wheel to get us where we needed to go, and we discovered agriculture by collecting seeds and planting them to feed our families. All of these and many more advancements that led to civilization as we know it today were born out of our combined informational knowledge and creative endeavors – observation, visualization, problem solving, imagination, and invention. All of these creative abilities improved our survival in the present.
RICH LEARNING
The parts of our brain 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 America today, we like to think that supporting math and science in education guarantees our dominance on the educational front. And, in the global community, in fact, these skills are very important to our progress. But, if just memorizing and reiterating data drives education in 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 to dive deeper into creative instructional 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 the creative skills that require students to apply them, those skills to investigate, invent, visualize – this is the expansion of knowledge we need to tackle a deeper, richer knowledge 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 solve problems 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 drew pictures and my parents and grandparents complimented me on the little drawings and paintings that I did. They said he was gifted with artistic talent. And, of course, his praise kept me drawing and painting.
My experience in teaching put me in contact with people who from the beginning had the same impulse to imagine, visualize and create, but were discouraged to go further. Rejection from an instructor, family member, peer, or shortness of breath easily destroyed her fragile and burgeoning creative drive. As I said earlier, we are all programmed to create: it is the part of our brain that gives us the ability to progress in our lives beyond our daily tasks, schedules, routines, and past commitments to imagine, visualize, and yes, dreaming.
WHAT I SAY TO MY STUDENTS
When my students tell me that they would like to learn to draw or paint, but haven’t done anything for years because someone said they made a silly drawing or that real learning involved memorizing facts and figures and that anything creative was just silly, they Sorry; 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 tell them that they already have the ability to create and that it is time they began to learn to reap the rich rewards of their creative endeavors.
This dialogue touches a broad demographic: the young, the middle-aged, and the elderly who need to improve their lives in some way. My younger students often feel disenfranchised in 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 their recreation have not satisfied them. Older students often feel that life has passed them by, even if they could have been successful and comfortably retired. These are the common profiles of the students I teach and this is their main core topic 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 daily lives and efforts.
CREATIVITY IS A PLACE
Creativity is a place we go. It has no limits or definitions. I know this location from my own work as an artist and I can see that location connects in the students. There is a palpable change in thinking when accessing this location. This place is a safe haven for inspiration, to know your innate creative self, the one that connects you with your dreams, imagination and visions. It is often a terrifying yet powerful resource that feels curiously good and self-improving.
Much of the research and development in many fields, including medicine, science, literature, computer science, is done by combining 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 progress toward a higher goal or need.
A student of mine once commented after I gave my “Inspiration vs. Knowledge” lecture:
“Well, I guess that means that when I’m writing, if I correct my mistakes by word-checking, that doesn’t necessarily improve my writing. So I can use a protractor or compass in my drawings, but that won’t guarantee it will improve the drawing. “
That comment has stuck in my memory over the years. Yes, knowledge is a template, but it also requires an infusion of open-field thinking, the swimming things, the primal pond in which new ideas emerge that can evolve into exciting applications to improve the world.