more special people than you think
Welcome to the conversation.
In their really helpful little book Art and Fear, David Bayles and Ted Orland begin a chapter with this little quote:
When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?” (Howard Ikemoto)
I loved this as soon as I read it.
People seem to think there are few creative, special people in the world and they aren’t amongst them.
In truth, they have forgotten that they can draw (I’ll use this as a euphemism for being amazingly creative in all kinds of ways). The institutions of the world don’t dispel this myth, but rather reinforce it.
There is a need for a tribe of people who will live and work in helping people to rediscover how to draw again. These are people who create environments where this rediscovering can happen for people. Their environments will be away from the familiar centres of people’s lives, as the affect from their familiar institutions upon them is very great indeed.
Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers when it comes to the people he is identifying that, It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.
What do you think?
April 27th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
I like what you write. Only a few seem to make that move beyond the familiar, but it is really wonderful to see someone you have encouraged taking their first steps of creativity out of their own initiative. With each step confidence is built and the battle is being won. It is good to be a part of this endevour - this adventure.
May 1st, 2009 at 2:23 pm
There’s nothing like it, Angela. Keep expanding your influence so more experience what you describe.
June 12th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Hi Geoffrey only just managed to pick up this thread, but its one of my pet subjects!
We are born in the image of God - the most creative of all. Everyone is born creative!
Drawing is the most natural thing in the world. Kids scribble before they can write - these are all drawings. However the older we get and the more we interract with the world around us, the more we realise that what we draw does not match up to what we see. And this is where the problem arises. Because we are not encouraged and taught the develop our creative abilities we feel like failures. It is fear of failure all through life that causes us to lose whatever creative instinct and ability we were born with. And as the old saying goes ‘use it or lose it’!
Actually its not about teaching people to draw its about teaching them to see and to look carefully at what is around them, using our eyes carefully. The two things that we use all day and every day, our eyes, we forget to educate. We teach language of words but not images, yet images are where we get most of our info from. Even the alphabet is just a series of images - line put together in different ways to form what we call letters.
Some will always be better than others - that applies in every walk of life, but we all have that creative instinct which needs to be encouraged
July 15th, 2009 at 10:57 am
I am sorry that it’s taken me so long to get back to you, Peter. Thanks for your comments.
This is a huge world for us to explore. We could have an army of people working with others, helping and encouraging them to identify their creative style, and still not make a dent in the numbers of people who have grown up not realising how creative they can be.
For me, the church ought to be at the forefront of this work, and yet, too often, I find it to be a major inhibitor. Let’s keep working with as many as we can, and work towards a creative future.