Eric Maisel: We need grandeur to survive. As everyday creative people and as artists, it is up to us to supply it for ourselves and for others.
But we tend to forget our possibilities and our responsibilities.
We forget that we are grand creatures who have it in us to create. We forget that grandeur is available [...]
James C. Kaufman is a creativity researcher and Associate Professor of Psychology at California State University, San Bernardino.
Here are some excerpts from his Psychology Today blog post “A Creativity Researcher’s Thoughts on the Oscars.”
If anyone gets discouraged about their creative progress in their careers, take heart from Mauro Fiore.
The cinematographer won the Academy Award for [...]
“I’ve suffered enough. When does my artwork improve?”
Refrigerator magnet from stickergiant.com
“Suffering is justified as soon as it becomes the raw material of beauty.” Jean-Paul Sartre
The tortured artist mythology is an ancient and enduring notion: that art comes mainly from suffering, and artists are likely to be fraught with suffering and dark emotions, and even [...]
By guest author Matt Cardin.
After having fallen into semi-official disrepute among the mainstream Western literati and intelligentsia for a century or three, the muse/genius/daimon was resurrected and rehabilitated for a new era beginning roughly in the 1990s.
Yes, Jung and the entire field of analytical psychology had valiantly championed the idea of the objectivity of the [...]
By guest author Shelley Berc. “We are all born creative, curious, and hungry to explore the world around and within us.
“For a child, creativity is expressed in play and play is the way he learns. Life is just one big erector set that is to be snapped together and pulled apart in a thousand different [...]
How we think about having and developing abilities can have a strong impact on actually using our talents. If we think creative expression has to wait for inspiration from a muse, or that there are only a few “chosen” geniuses with exceptional “gifts” in computer graphics, fashion design, writing novels or whatever – and think [...]
In his PsyBlog post Why Group Norms Kill Creativity, Jeremy Dean (a researcher at University College London) notes that “Groups only rarely foment great ideas because people in them are powerfully shaped by group norms: the unwritten rules which describe how individuals in a group ‘are’ and how they ‘ought’ to behave.
“Norms influence what people [...]
As part of her recovery from a water-skiing accident and brain surgery, actor and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg was evaluated with MRI scans, which can involve weird mechanical noises up to the intensity of a jet plane taking off.
Her new album, developed with Beck, is titled “IRM” – derived from the French for MRI. Follow the [...]
You can hoard creative work, keeping it hidden from others, and some people do just that – writing a novel, for example, that remains for years in a closet. But most creators need to risk criticism and rejection to get their project seen or realized. A screenplay doesn’t become a movie by staying secret.
Stephen King [...]
“What you do for a living is not be creative, what you do is ship,” says author and entrepreneur Seth Godin, who suggests we must deal with our fearful “lizard brains” to avoid sabotaging projects just before we finally finish and present them to the world.
That summary is from a couple of sources, including scannercentral.co.uk
The [...]
“If you’re going to spend a life in the arts, you need to be infused with a sense of gratitude and a sense of wonder. It’s a privilege to do this profession.
“But there is a payment you have to make for that privilege, which is to do your best all the time.
“To challenge [...]
Does it enhance creativity to be concerned with what other people think?
In his post Creativity and richness of brain concepts, professor of neuroesthetics Semir Zeki argues that “one of the dangers that limits creativity is self-censorship.
“Any creative person, whether in art or literature or music or theatre, who censors what they want to say or [...]
“When I say to you, there is nobody like me, and there never was, that is a statement I want every woman to feel and make about themselves.”
Lady Gaga
Read more at Women and Talent
Amber Riley is one of the dynamic actor-singers on the musical/comedy series Glee. She recalls her rejection from American Idol:
“My life was crushed when they told me ‘No.’ But… rejection like that only makes you stronger, gets you asking — how can I better myself?”
Continued on The Inner Actor.
With something like twenty percent of us being highly sensitive, that means there are many performers with the trait – musicians, actors, public speakers.
In her book The Highly Sensitive Person, Elaine Aron, PhD writes, “This is a natural for HSPs – yes, it is.
“(I leave you to think about all the reasons why it is [...]
This is an excerpt from the audio book What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell, including some of his experiences and anecdotes on finding creative inspiration and ideas.
From the Publisher’s Summary at Audible.com:
“With his #1 best sellers, The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell has reached millions of readers. [...]
Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy, better known as SARK to millions of fans worldwide, is a writer and visual artist who “encourages and inspires women of all ages to become “succulent.” She defines this as transcending past pains and feeling the freedom of full self-expression.” [From summary of her book Succulent Wild Woman.]
Julia Cameron, author of [...]
Fear may be a barrier for many of us, getting in the way of realizing our creative ventures. There are probably hundreds of related quotes and articles on Talent Development Resources – here are a few.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my [...]
Actor, writer, producer Felicia Day says, “I don’t think I ever knew I wasn’t a geek” in the Girls Go Geek video below [posted on Amber Mac - site of Amber MacArthur.]
In his Wired interview article How Felicia Day Recruited Millions for Her Guild, Gus Mastrapa notes, Felicia Day’s stardom wasn’t handed down to her [...]
From Your brain on Tetris, The Week magazine, Sep 25, 2009
Playing Tetris, the classic computer game, actually enlarges your brain, scientists say.
The game, which turns 25 this year, calls on players to rapidly fit together colored puzzle pieces as they fall from the top of the screen.
In a recent study, neuroscientists asked two dozen adolescents [...]
The smARTist Telesummit 2009 package
Professional Keynote Presentations on a range of critical Art Career strategies by 11 Experts and successful Artists.
MP3 Recordings of all 13 Professional Art-Career Sessions. A complete development conference… 2 days of Master Mind Panel Discussions, in which the speakers discussed attendees’ questions and stories.
PDF copies of all handouts. Detailed how-to, step-by-step, [...]
Collecting stuff – both physically and mentally – can fuel our creative work and motivation, and also help us realize what interests we have that could be used for new job possibilities or entrepreneurial ventures.
The photo is acclaimed painter Mark Ryden, who says, “In the same spirit as those earlier collectors filling their cabinets of [...]
High Intelligence Specialist Deborah L. Ruf, Ph.D. comments in her book Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind about some of the factors in why there are fewer eminent women in most fields :
“In my experience, most girls and women, as a group, tend to see shades of meaning and concepts more easily and are [...]
From article: At 5, singer hits high notes in her career, by Catherine Cheney, Los Angeles Times September 4, 2009
Kaitlyn Maher was a finalist on ‘America’s Got Talent,’ and has a new CD and a Disney movie coming out.
Video: “What stops you from doing what you love? It’s a survival mechanism called Resistance, and it goes into alert mode any time you do something that raises anxiety.”
Barbara Sher points out, “Everyone has unique gifts and talents. What you love is what you’re gifted at. To be completely happy, to live a completely fulfilled [...]
[From a Dana Press Blog:]
At the recent Learning and the Brain Conference in Washington D.C., Nancy C. Andreasen, M.D., Ph.D., discussed the importance of providing students with a “liberal education” that combines the study of the arts and the sciences.
She asked: How important are the arts for optimal development of the mind and brain? How [...]
