On Creativity

Often when working on a painting, at some point in the process, I get into a zone where time stops, and values, color choices, and brush strokes just seem to flow out of me. It is almost like someone else is making the choices for me. Other artists have been quoted saying the creative process brings them closer to God. Or God is in the creative process. There does seem to be an other worldly quality when in the middle of being creative.
A neurologist would say this creative feeling comes from  tapping into the right side of our brains. Brain scans have shown, when people are creative, the right side of their brains are more active. There are also case studies of people who have had  brain damage on their left side, and become more creative.
I once heard an interview of a song writer on the radio. The composer was asked about her writing process. She said that sometimes the writing is difficult and slow. But many times  it is like the music  just flows through her.She said it is as if the songs are streaming above her already written and somehow she is able to tap into it.
In one sense creativity is problem solving. The artist or scientist, or writer, or musician, or engineer is confronted with a problem. If there is no ready  acceptable answer, each person in their field tries to approach their problems from a different perspective. Finding the answer where there isn't one, is creativity.

 I remember judging a children's art show and being delighted by a little boy's creative problem solving. He drew the side of a truck on a road indicated by two parallel lines running parallel to the bottom of the page. Then he was confronted by a problem. He wanted to show the road making a left turn with another truck going the new direction. He only knew one way to make a truck and he didn't understand linear perspective. He solved his problem by drawing the lines of the road up the middle of the paper and turning his truck on end. By turning the paper you now see the truck going in a new direction. That is creativity!

My ideas about art and creativity were brought into question during an art history class at Eastern Michigan University. An abstract artist showed slides of his paintings done in the sixties. The paintings were all the same size and appeared to be large. "Each painting was divided into a square grid pattern," the artist explained,     "and each square of the grid was randomly assigned a number." "Then like a 'paint by number' with each number representing a different color, I painted in the squares." Because The numbers were randomly assigned, no two paintings were alike. Was that creative? Was the second one? I asked him if he ever considered  changing the color assignments if he thought it might make  a more interesting painting. He said no because it wouldn't be true to his original intent.

As a painter, without  the problem solving, the challenge to do something that has never been done before,without the creativity,  then why bother. Art to me is all about the creative process. To finish a painting is a reason to start another one.