Creativity is Natural

Looking for ideas?  Where do you go?
Try going back to your childhood.  I believe that every child is born creative and adult training slowly constricts innovative thinking to the point that it can completely disappear.  What kind of adult training am I talking about?  Well, lets go back to elementary school.  Many educational lessons involve restricting choices and I am not talking about discipline.  I am referring to specific problem solving skills required in all areas of study.  Many subjects such as Math are objective and do not allow for self-expression.  The Fine Arts do include elements of discipline, but are specifically subjective and allow for freedom of choice and personal expression. This is the perfect opportunity to allow for imaginative thinking and for understanding how a student processes information.

Children love to create. They only need the proper materials most appropriate for their age.  Its no surprise but my favorite class was art.  I can remember a project that involved learning how to draw my initials in perspective creating the illusion of depth. Very cool. We then were allowed the freedom to choose two colors to use on the letters.  I chose brown and black. I wanted black for the sides of the letters (for shadow) and brown for the front.  My teacher repeatedly lectured me that I should have chosen pretty colors like yellow or red.  I recognized the teacher's concern regarding my color choices as she felt I was suffering some emotional strain that made me choose brown and black.  My success at perspective was never indicated and I felt so pressured to change the colors (although I did not) that I did not feel comfortable explaining the true reason.   There was no big emotional reason as to my choices but my teacher missed the opportunity not only to understand something about me but also succeeded in adding a brick to my wall of creative inhibitions.

I was so excited to learn about perspective and so proud of what I had accomplished, both achieving an illusion of depth and applying my ideas to an image. This pride was diminished by criticism of my personal choice that had no relevance to the assignment.  My self-esteem definitely took a hit that day, but alas I survived, but certainly understand more clearly the importance self-expression.  Although my creative ideas continued, I developed a distinct fear of sharing those ideas. Sadly, I believe everyone has experienced a similar occurrence that ended many an art career at a very early age.

Brown is the color of chocolate and I imagined my initials as blocks of chocolate.