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Tag: creativity

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Use it or lose it

Best Buds, 11X14, oil on canvasboard, $1087 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without,” is a famous Yankee proverb. I love to sew but don’t much like mending. It hardly seems worth the effort, especially to replace the zipper in an already worn pair of trousers. If I was in any doubt about the infrequency of my sewing, my needle had spots of corrosion.

I was once a fairly adept seamstress. Imagine my annoyance, then, when I sewed the blasted zipper in wrong and had to rip it out. (It still looks awful, but that’s my husband’s problem. At these prices, he’s got nothing to complain about.)

There are some skills, like breathing, that you don’t forget. There are many others that get rusty if they’re not used. Use them or lose them.

In Control (Grace and her Unicorn), 24X30, $3,478 framed, oil on canvas, includes shipping in continental United States.

What’s stopping you?

There are many reasons people don’t do creative work. The biggest of these is fear of failure. Starting something unknown means seeing all our flaws and shortcomings magnified. We worry that our work won’t be good enough. It’s easier to imagine what you might do than to take the risk of doing it.

Perfectionism is artistic expression’s greatest enemy. There are people who feel that if they can’t create something perfect, it’s not worth trying at all. But nobody has ever created perfect art; nor will they.

Perhaps you were told that you were a linear thinker rather than a creative one. That’s an absurdity; creativity, like any other form of thinking, takes practice. Or you were told that art is an innate talent. It isn’t, any more than understanding science or engineering is innate. They all take work.

“When I was young, I shied away from art because I mistakenly thought that either you had talent/ability or you didn’t. Period. It didn’t occur to me that like music or writing, you can take a bit of raw talent and get better at it with lessons and practice,” my student Sandy Sibley said.

Ravenous Wolves, oil on canvas, 24X30, $3,478.00 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

If you’re someone who’s been discouraged from the creative arts, you may lack self-confidence. Social media doesn’t help. Just as we’re all set up to compare our looks to those of influencers, we’re all ambushed by the highly-polished works we see on the internet. (They may, in fact, be totally lacking in charm in the real world, but that’s a different issue.)

Lastly, your routine might not allow for creativity. I don’t sew now because I haven’t got the mental or physical space, so I understand if you can’t find a place to paint. But there’s always room to draw. It requires a sketchbook and a pencil.

Do you feel like you challenge your own creativity?

Yesterday I saw pussy willows along the trail. A new season means new opportunities, and I encourage you to find a way to express yourself this spring, through gardening, cooking, woodworking, sewing, painting, sculpting—in short, anything that brings you the joy of creating.

I’m offering two new classes this spring

Zoom Class: Advance your painting skills

Mondays, 6 PM – 9 PM EST
April 28 to June 9

Advance your skills in oils, watercolor, gouache, acrylics and pastels with guided exercises in design, composition and execution.

This Zoom class not only has tailored instruction, it provides a supportive community where students share work and get positive feedback in an encouraging and collaborative space. Learn More

Heavy Weather (Ketch Angelique), 24X36, oil on canvas, framed, $3985 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Zoom class: Signature series

Tuesdays, 6 PM – 9 PM EST
April 29-June 10

This is a combination painting/critique class where students will take deep dives into finding their unique voices as artists, in an encouraging and collaborative space. The goal is to develop a nucleus of work as a springboard for further development.

We will examine work against both the formal standards of design and the artists’ stated goals. Learn More

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I’m an artist; I don’t have a math brain

Surf’s Up is 12X16, on a prepared birch surface. $1159 includes shipping and handling in the Continental US.

When I was growing up, there was a popular idea that you were either good at math and science or at art and writing. I was definitely good at art and writing, so I couldn’t be good at math. It didn’t help that I skipped the second grade and never learned my times tables.

It never dawned on me that the ability to make my own sewing patterns or sculpt in clay were, in fact, signs of a math brain.

It wasn’t until college that I realized that I could see mathematical relationships. After that, I decided that proofs were just a memorization game, and math became easy-peasy. I took math up to 3D calculus.

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of artists. “How many of you like to sew? Do carpentry? Cook?” I asked. Many hands went up. “How many of you hate math?” About the same number said yes. But of course, sewing, carpentry and cooking all require the math brain. It’s too bad that for so many of us, math wasn’t mathin’ when we were in school.

High Surf, 12X16, oil on prepared birch painting surface, $1159 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

What is your math brain?

Like creativity, math isn’t isolated into a single brain region, but rather is done in a network of interconnected brain areas. Here’s the funny thing: math and language share common brain areas (and as I mentioned on Wednesday, the brain is awfully good at compensating when parts don’t work right). However, there are some areas where there is specialization, particularly for speech.

As with creativity, math abilities are not fixed; they can be developed and improved through practice and learning. What blocks most of us from using our math skills is math anxiety. The only way around that is to challenge it head-on, by working with numbers. (When you get old, someone is going to ask you to count backwards by sevens to see if you’re gaga. You may as well practice now.)

Sunset over Cadillac Mountain, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 includes shipping and handling.

Why should an artist care about math?

Whether they know it or not, artists use math all the time. We work in spatial relationships; that’s math. We painters work additively; sculptors work subtractively. People working in more technically-specific forms like intaglio, glassblowing or encaustic make constant adjustments that are based on either formal or off-the-cuff calculations.

Artists routinely simplify and abstract forms; that is a basic form of mathematics. It’s helpful to understand some geometry before you attempt two-point perspective. Symmetry in its different forms (reflection, translation, rotation) is a math concept. And the classical compositional armature, the Golden Ratio, is based on math. Our ancestors, after all, didn’t see a disconnect between the math brain and the art brain.

Just as anyone can exercise his or her creativity and get better at it, anyone can exercise his or her math brain. Math is the language that describes every function in our bodies, our planet and our universe. There’s no reason for an artist to be afraid of it.

Forsythia at Three Chimneys, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental United States.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: why do we create art?

Art print by Jesse Petersen, available here. Courtesy of the artist.

I just finished presenting at the Sedona Entrepreneurial Artist Development Program (SEAD). One of my co-presenters, Jesse Petersen said: “Even if this wasn’t my job, even if I lost everything that I have now, I would always create for myself and share what I do because it is deeply meaningful and the way I process life.”

Our culture says that to do art, you have to be good at it. That’s nonsense. Art doesn’t just allow us to express emotions, ideas, and experiences, it helps us work through them.

“When I have a daily art practice and dedicate time to making art—and it doesn’t have to be good art,” continued Jesse, “I show up better for my family, friends, community, church. I used to think taking that time was selfish, but now I know that just makes me better.”

Art journal by Jesse Petersen, courtesy of the artist.

Why do we create art, according to received wisdom?

The traditional reasons for making art are:

  • Expressing thoughts, feelings, and beliefs
  • Reinforcing socially-acceptable thoughts, feelings and beliefs
  • Communicating ideas and ideals
  • Expressing beauty
  • Telling stories
  • Recording history
  • Activism
  • Creating community

But these are the reasons for which publicly-consumed art is created. What about the more hands-on, accessible, personal art? It may never have the international significance of, say, Goya’s The Third of May, 1808, but it changes countless lives.

“I used to think making art was a luxury to be done after my to-do list was done, now I realize it’s the first thing I should do,” said Jesse.

Two of Jesse’s art-journaling students attended the SEAD program, and both were motivated to stick around after the program ended. Long after everyone else had left, the three of them sat in the empty theater, making art together. Leslie Barrett and Sharon Gilham are what we call emerging artists, which means they’re trying to ruin a perfectly good hobby by selling their work.

Artwork by Jesse Petersen, courtesy of the artist.

“I started to do more art when my kids moved out of the house,” Leslie told me. “I had more time. I started to think about how much I liked art in the past. I was very curious about watercolor, mixed media, and books. I work in technology, so it’s nice to come home, relax, and do something for myself.”

“I’ve been creative my whole life but never really trusted I was any good at it,” Sharon said. She works in the hospitality industry, which is a tough fit because she’s essentially introverted. “Art calms me down after a long day at work.

“There are so many weird things in my head that I don’t know how to communicate with words, so this is an outlet for me. I have always been someone a little more guarded about sharing my emotions, and I try to put them into my art. I start with a feeling, a thought, or a color palette, and start the creation from that. It’s almost purely the emotion going into the piece.”

Art journal by Jesse Petersen, courtesy of the artist.

Both Sharon and Leslie took the SEAD workshop because they have seen a growing interest in their work from prospective buyers. They’re thinking about potential post-retirement careers. However, it’s clear from their conversation that they love the act of creation. As Leslie said, “I don’t try to make anything I don’t have a personal connection to.”

I can’t see why everyone doesn’t want a piece of that. Art doesn’t have to mean painting or sculpture. It could be printing, or art journaling, or photography or quilting. You really should try it.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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What is hands-on learning?

Possum, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.

In the traditional sense of craft, I’m impaired. Take a brush out of my hands and I’m tripping over myself. But my artist circle includes many fine craftsmen, and I don’t see much difference between craft and painting.

“Crafting is… a form of manual thinking,” Ainsley Hawthorn wrote. “As we craft, we’re using our hands to problem-solve, to make decisions, and to express ourselves. In doing so, we’re able to access different sets of knowledge than when we’re simply mulling something over.”

Hawthorn is a self-described ‘cultural historian, sensory scholar, and author.’ Despite the fact that she makes art on menstrual pads I think she’s right about crafting and the brain. We bypass conscious thinking by means of motor learning and muscle memory. They use different parts of our brain than our conscious processes.

Toy Monkey and Candy, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 framed includes shipping and handling in the continental US.

What is hands-on learning?

Kinesthetic learning enjoyed a brief vogue a few years ago. It’s defined as a learning style that functions best with physical activity, movement, and hands-on experiences. Essentially it means learning by doing rather than by passively absorbing information through watching or listening.

Sadly, there’s no data that supports the idea that kinesthetic learners do better when taught kinesthetically. Apparently, you can’t dance your way to understanding calculus. But I’d wager that we’re all hands-on learners; it’s baked into the human brain. This is the way we humans teach our offspring. Eventually, they manage to hit their mouths with their spoons and put their shoes on the right feet. But they’d never get there if we just lectured them instead of showing them and helping them.

Stuffed animal in a bowl, with Saran Wrap. 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

That was also true for traditional jobs like cordwaining, carpentry and coopering, which is why so many professions developed along the apprentice-journeyman-master guild model and why so many skilled trades still use that system today. That’s also why the atelier model of teaching art creates such good artists and the university model creates such good theoreticians.

We’ve always had intellectuals (or abstract thinkers, if you prefer). Before the Enlightenment they confined themselves to philosophy, mathematics and other obscure disciplines. It’s only in the modern era that trades like engineering, medicine or law began to rest on a foundation of theoretical knowledge before hands-on experience.

Creativity is good for your brain

There is evidence that creative pursuits reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety and reduce the incidence of dementia.

“The flow state we enter when we’re completely immersed in a creative activity like crafting is intrinsically pleasurable and keeps us from ruminating over negative thoughts,” wrote Dr. Hawthorn. “Craft projects are often small-scale and attainable, giving crafters a sense of achievement as they complete each one. Because crafting has tangible results, crafters can literally watch their skills improve over time and gain confidence in themselves and their capabilities.”

We know play is crucial in early childhood. It lets children explore their environment, build cognitive skills, develop social interactions, regulate emotions, enhance creativity and practice problem-solving. So why do we stop playing as adults?

Back It Up, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

Working with your hands is so much fun

Earlier this year, my husband and I built a new gallery space. Since neither of us are mechanical engineers, it’s probably overengineered, but it’s unlikely to fall down and it’s neat. We had a terrific time calculating, cutting, and hammering.

I will never again try to make a glass ball ornament Christmas tree (one of my most spectacular failures) but I get that same creative buzz painting. Whether it’s gardening, cooking, needle-felting, pottery or painting, everyone should exercise their creativity.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Exercise and creativity

Early Morning at Moon Lake, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

I have never once gotten up in the morning and said, “gee, I can’t wait to get outside and climb Beech Hill.” That goes double for winter, but I still do it every day.

I’ve been doing serious daily exercise (and, yes, I mean seven days a week) as long as I can remember. Even during chemo, I’d push my drip bag along on a pole and keep walking. In fact, I turned down a port because it would mess with my running schedule.

On the Hard, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $522 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

I’m not telling you this to be a twit; I believe exercise is an important daily habit, no different from brushing my teeth or making my bed. Although I’ve had two serious cancers, I’m still here. I’ve also avoided the typical diseases of aging like diabetes and heart disease.

The physical benefits of exercise are well-documented. Exercise improves brain health, including memory and learning, executive function, processing speed and attention span. It helps us manage weight, reduces the risk of disease, and strengthens bones and muscles.

Equally documented are exercise’s mental health benefits. Exercise reduces anxiety, depression, social withdrawal and negative mood. And exercise slows down the physical and mental decline of old age. I’m not going down without a fight.

Coal Seam, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Exercise and creativity go hand in hand

There’s a demonstrated link between exercise and creativity. “Even a single, brief bout of aerobic exercise can ignite creative thinking,” wrote Dr. Chong Chen, author of a narrative review on the topic. He looked at 21 studies exploring the link between exercise and creativity.

Both the type of exercise and its duration affect its impact on creativity. For example, strength training doesn’t seem to do much for brain plasticity. Too much exercise and we stop benefiting (and may even decline).

What is creative thinking, anyway?

Mid-century psychologist Dr. J. P. Guilford identified two types of creative thinking: divergent and convergent. Convergent thinking is arriving at the single best answer to a question. Divergent thinking is the process of exploring many possible solutions. Divergent thinking is associative and flexible, while convergent thinking relies on working memory and fluid intelligence.

You might think that divergent thinking is all we need as artists, but in fact we need both. First, we come up with our ideas; then we winnow and execute them.

Peace, 8X16, $903 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

How does this work, physiologically?

Regular aerobic activity can trigger structural changes in the brain, including increased brain volume, particularly in the hippocampus, according to Amir-Homayoun Javadi, author of Joggin’ the Noggin. But these adaptations occur over time. What happens in the short run?

Javadi suggests that acute exercise temporarily improves our blood flow, bringing fresh oxygen to the brain. Furthermore, exercise that doesn’t demand much thought (like my daily walk) actually dampens activity within the prefrontal cortex, allowing the mind to roam free, without constraints. That may be why walking shows better promise for creativity than yoga, which requires mindfulness.

The biggest bang for your buck

Activities like treadmill running and dance help with convergent thinking. Meanwhile, walking helps with divergent thinking and is the only form of exercise associated with heightened originality. However, it’s apparently useless at enhancing convergent thinking. On the other hand, if you have a hill or mountain nearby, the uphill slog can benefit your convergent thinking and the downhill amble will help your divergent thinking. Presto! Beautiful, balanced brain!

One more thing

If you know a school administrator, policy-setter, school board member, or parent, wave this post in front of him or her and suggest-strongly-that school policy allow kids lots more time untethered from their desks. Immobilizing our children, whether in school or in front of the television, is surely one of the great injustices of our current age.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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I’m learning a new art form

I’m slowly learning to act naturally in front of the camera. It’s been a difficult process.

The ancient Greeks used ποίημα (poiēma) to describe workmanship. It comes down to English as poem and poetry. Poesis, which means bringing something into being that did not exist before, is another derivative.

It’s no surprise that ancient Greeks thought of creativity in poetic terms; they were masters of verse. We do the same thing today, letting language romp across various art forms willy-nilly. Composition and dissonance, for example, mean the same thing to a musician as to a painter.

That’s because the structure of art is oddly consistent across genres. My bass player husband can pick up any string instrument and coax decent sound from it, because the principles are universal.

There are exceptions, of course. “What is the equivalent of a sketch in photography?” Ron Andrews mused in response to this post. Ron’s right about static photography not needing sketches, but storyboards are just sketches for moving pictures.

The two classes I have finished so far; number three should join them shortly.

You don’t know what you don’t know

At the beginning of this year, I set out to make a series of online classes about painting. I want to get through the seven steps of a painting by the end of this year. I’m almost done with step three, composition. It’s been a doozy. The lesson is long and complex, but so is the subject of composition.

Just the brain dump would be challenging enough. On top of that, I’m still learning the medium. I have no director, so I’m learning to speak slowly and naturally to a camera in an empty room. I’m learning to do voice-overs and tinkering with ways to demonstrate technique. I’ve learned to edit audio and video on three different platforms.

Then there are the exercises and quizzes. To write them is easy; to make them work interactively online is more difficult. Thank goodness for Laura Boucher. She’s my operations manager, daughter, and software guru.

Then there’s Monday Morning Art School, which is free, of course.

Look to the experts

I don’t watch television or movies and I’m too old for Tik-Tok. To overcome this, Laura has me studying YouTube videos. Sandi Brock is a middle-aged sheep farmer from Ontario with close to a million subscribers. She’s an improbable influencer. I learn a lot from her.

The most liberating lesson is that people really don’t care about my flat Buffalo accent or wrinkles. To some extent, the artifice of perfection is irrelevant in contemporary social media. People find their own tribe and ignore the rest.

Painters today have incredible resources compared to the last century. My father taught me to paint, but for most people, learning opportunities were limited to what the local art gallery had on offer. If, like Bob Ross, you were interested in realism in a town where abstraction was king, tough. You were out of luck.

Today you can go online and study with just about anyone, including me. You’re the captain of your own ship, for good or ill.

I have already made a few hundred ‘resources’ for this online class. I’m getting better at it as I go along.

I’m a convert

When I was young, I took voice lessons. I still love to sing, but my voice is a mess. Right now, I’m looking for a place to take voice lessons online. The beauty of this scheme is that I don’t need to show up at 6 PM on Tuesdays; I can do the lessons whenever I want.

Three years ago, at the start of COVID, I fought the idea of teaching online. Today I’m a convert. The proof is in the pudding, and my Zoom classes have proven more effective than ‘real life’ classes in creating professional artists, and almost as effective as intensive workshops.

And that’s why I’m, at age 64, learning a whole new form of ποίησις. The medium may change, but the impulses of creation are universal.

So tell me in the comments, what new skill are you working on?

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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If not today, when?

Matt in his down coat, drawing at Sedona. He was not overdressed for the weather. (Photo courtesy Ed Buonvecchio)

Yesterday, I ambled around the grounds of the French Legation State Historic Site in Austin musing about my plans for Sunday. The air here is clear and warm, the bluebonnets are blooming, and the trees are leafing out-perfect conditions for a day with horses.

Then I remembered that my pal Sarah and the stable are back home in Maine. They’re about to receive another blast of arctic air, dropping temperatures back into the 20s and bringing more of the foul ‘mixed precipitation’ that so bedeviled last week’s workshop in Sedona. That’s my current disconnect.

Nita wore a sock over her casted hand to keep it warm. (Photo courtesy Ed Buonvecchio)

Last week’s weather was awful for plein air painting. However, I had a dedicated band that stuck it out. Nita had a pickleball fracture in her right arm. She’s a southpaw but she could only use watercolor, as managing pastels was impossible without two hands. In the cold, her injury started to throb. She painted, quietly excused herself to warm up her errant limb or go to physical therapy, and then returned. Every day.

Joan had never painted before. On my recommendation she bought a gouache kit and drove down from Seattle. No matter how grim the weather, she gamely stayed with me, exercise after exercise. At the time, I thought, “this is an awful introduction to painting; she’s never going to want to do this again.” Still, she learned the fundamentals. She says she’s going to keep with it.

Joan listening to me carrying on. (Photo courtesy Ed Buonvecchio)

What’s got you rattled?

I can think of a million reasons to not paint today. In fact, I can find a million reasons to not paint every day. I’ve written before about how Ken DeWaard, Eric Jacobsen, Björn Runquist and I can dither. There are legitimate reasons why your creative impulses are blunted, including bad weather, work, children, or storms of grief or anxiety.

We all suffer from competing demands that distract us from what we need to do. For me, for years, it was my house. I couldn’t paint if it was a mess, because disorder always feels like a tide about to engulf me

Most of us have creative impulses-to write, to paint, to build furniture, to design beautiful interior spaces or gardens. The vast majority of us never do anything with those impulses, claiming a lack of time or energy. That’s despite being able to binge-watch television shows, slavishly follow the Buffalo Bills, or (in my case) read bad novels.

Joy and Matt persevering despite the cold. (Photo courtesy Ed Buonvecchio)

Are you hiding from the challenge?

Not creating is a safe position from which to operate. Your talent is inviolable, protected, a seed not open to criticism. You remain assured that you’re really a genius, which could suddenly be apparent as soon as you have the time or focus to start creating.

That gives you the latitude to criticize other creators, as you are protected from criticism yourself.

Many of us-most of us, in fact-will go to our graves never having moved past the ‘potential’ position. Those who do experience a transition to deep humility as we start to work through all the ways our craft can go wrong. We’re no longer so quick to have opinions about other work, because we recognize the struggle in which it was created.

But first you must start.

Whatever creative task you are called to do, there is always a day you must start doing it, instead of merely thinking about it. This might be that day, my friend.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025: