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Left handedness and creativity

Cottonwoods along the Rio Verde River, $696 unframed, oil on Baltic birch.

About ten percent of the global population is left-handed, but I see a higher percentage of lefties among my students.

We still don’t know what causes left-handedness, but lefties are more likely to be ambidextrous than righties. I’ve known lefties who can do mirror-writing (including myself). This makes me think that the lefty brain is processing things slightly differently than do right-handed people.

As a lefty, I’ve always been interested in left handedness and creativity. Is there a correlation or is that a myth? Research on that question has yielded mixed results.

American Eagle in Drydock, 12X16, $1159 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Brain lateralization

Brain lateralization refers to the specialization of the brain’s two hemispheres (left and right) for different functions. The left hemisphere typically dominates for language and logic, and the right for spatial and creative tasks. However, every person’s brain develops differently, and there’s a lot of overlap between the two sides of the brain. Our brain is an amazing, miraculous instrument in which the other side can take over if one side is damaged by stroke or injury.

Lefties develop less brain lateralization than righties. That means we rely less on the left hemisphere for certain tasks like language. However, that doesn’t necessarily translate to increased creativity. The problem for scientists is that creativity is a cluster of skills and propensities. That isn’t so easy to measure.

Cinnamon Fern, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Left-handedness is, however, linked to higher incidences of serious mental illness. The prevalence of left-handedness is roughly average for mood disorders like depression and bipolar disorder, but it rises for serious forms of psychosis like schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder.

If creativity is the capacity to see things differently than the ‘typical’ human brain, then perhaps left-handed creativity is linked to those debilitatingly different viewpoints.

Left handedness is also linked to higher rates of autism spectrum. That may be due to the weaker brain lateralization in left-handed people.

What do we do with our left-handed kids?

I was born with a pencil in my hand (which must have been very painful for my mother). It is possible that, as a culture, we expect our lefties to be artistic, so we train them to be artistic. To see whether this was the case, a team of researchers analyzed woodcarvers in a pre-industrial society in New Guinea. The results? There was no link between left handedness and creativity. This suggests that our western link between lefties and creativity is created by the stereotype that left-handers are more artistic.

Eastern Manitoba River, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Suppression of left-handedness

I enjoy telling people that I’m the world’s oldest living artist; someday it will actually be true. However, I learned to write and draw in the early 1960s. By that time nobody was suppressing left handedness; in fact, as a kid I didn’t know any older people who’d had their handedness suppressed. When I read that suppressing left handedness was practiced up to the late 20th century in the United States, I just laugh. Be careful what you read on the internet, kids.

The more you create, the more creative you’ll be

The human mind is too intrepid and too varied to be put in any kind of box, and that includes the box of handedness. The more you create, the more creative you’ll be. Whether you’re left- or right-handed doesn’t matter.

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Drawing on the right side of the brain

Beach Roses, 9X12, oil on linen. I’m only posting warm-weather pictures today in protest against this week’s howling Arctic winds.

I haven’t seen my copy of Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain since the 1980s, so I can’t remember much about the drawing exercises. According to the internet, they were based on contour drawing, negative space, size relationships, shading, drawing from memory and drawing from imagination. These are all important concepts, and any drawing exercises will make you better at drawing. On the other hand, there was the whole gestalt thing, which was a trippy 1970s way of saying that drawing is greater than the sum of its parts.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is critically flawed in that it rests on the premise of a left-brain, right-brain dichotomy. That’s a theory that’s been scientifically debunked but never seems to die.

Spring Greens, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $652 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

What was the ‘drawing on the right side of the brain’ theory, anyway?

When the first edition of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was published in 1979, brain science was comparatively primitive. Research into callosotomies (so-called split-brain syndrome) led to a limited and distorted understanding of brain lateralization.  

The theory that people are either left-brained (logical, analytical, and detail-oriented) or right-brained (creative, intuitive, and emotional) gained immediate traction. Lefties, of course, were supposed to be right-brain-dominant, and therefore artsy. You poor right-handers (about 90% of the population) were doomed to be engineers and accountants. You could loosen up the synapses by doing right-brain exercises, including that insidious art-school exercise, making righthanded people draw with their left hands. Lefties are more likely to be ambidextrous, so asking that of righthanded people was particularly unfair.

As an ambidextrous lefty myself, I was adept at mirror writing but mostly because I was bored out of my nut in school. Even today, nobody really knows what causes left-handedness. There’s no evidence that we’re any more creative than right-handed people, but a lot of us lefties were told we were ‘arty’ .

Apple Blossom Time, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Subsequent studies have failed to show any evidence that people are predominantly left-brained or right-brained, regardless of which hand they use. Moreover, brain activity does not align with personality traits. A 2013 study using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) of over 1,000 participants found no evidence of individuals showing a dominant use of one hemisphere over the other.

You need your whole dang brain

Certain functions like language processing and spatial awareness may be lateralized, but most brain activities involve collaboration between both hemispheres. That’s especially true of complex tasks and traits like creativity, intuition, or linear thinking. They happen all over your brain.

Furthermore, a tremendous body of research on neuroplasticity shows that the human brain is far from fixed. It can repair and change itself, sometimes in profound ways.

Spring Allee, oil on archival canvasboard, 14X18, $1594.00 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Why do I care?

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain remains a best-selling drawing and pop psychology text, and the left brain-right brain theory has been accepted into our common folklore.

The fantasy that there’s a disconnect between logic and emotion, science and art, structure and creativity, goes back at least as far as Star Trek. It’s the biggest reason why people think they can’t draw.

I’ve got a friend who says she can’t do math but is a fine seamstress. What are alterations and patternmaking but geometry? Math, language and art are all whole-brain activities, and they mesh together. It’s a lie that you can’t do one of them because of how your brain is wired.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025: