HOW I SEE CREATIVITY
For more than forty years, I have been exploring the relationship between art, design, teaching, and imagination. Through making, observing, and questioning, I have come to believe that creativity begins long before an idea takes form. It begins with our ability to notice, to wonder, and to make connections between the world around us.
OBSERVATION IS WHERE CREATIVITY BEGINS
Before there is an idea, there is usually a moment of noticing.
A color relationship catches your eye. A shape feels oddly familiar. Something someone says in passing stays with you. A contradiction doesn't quite make sense, or a memory surfaces for no obvious reason other than just to drive you absolutely nuts. Sometimes it is simply a question that refuses to go away.
Artists and designers are constantly collecting shit. Not physical things, although my wife would argue that I hoard art supplies. We collect images, sounds, conversations, gestures, mistakes, memories, bits of information, and things we don't quite understand yet.
Most of the time, we have no idea what any of it means. We simply notice something, and for whatever reason, it gets locked away somewhere in the brain vault.
The more closely we pay attention, the more interesting the world becomes.
IMAGINATION TRANSFORMS WHAT WE OBSERVE
Once something gets our attention, imagination has a hard time leaving it alone.
It rearranges things, combines them, pulls them apart, and occasionally puts two things together that have absolutely no business being together. Sometimes that combination works. Sometimes it is a complete disaster. Every once in a while, it leads somewhere you never would have found by simply following the rules.
I don't think of imagination as simply dreaming about things that don't exist. To me, imagination is the ability to see possibilities hiding inside what already exists.
A shape becomes a figure. A photograph becomes a painting. A problem becomes an opportunity. A mistake becomes the most interesting part of the work.
The question is simple:
What else could this become?
CONNECTIONS CREATE MEANING
Imagination doesn't work alone. The things we wonder about have a way of bumping into other things we've experienced.
I've spent much of my life moving between painting, design, teaching, drawing, and simply paying attention to what is happening around me. For a long time, I thought of these as separate parts of my life. The longer I do this, the less sense that makes.
They are constantly talking to one another.
Something I discover while painting can change the way I approach a design problem. A design problem can send me back to the studio thinking differently about shape, composition, or color. A conversation with a student can make me question something I thought I understood about my own work.
The connections aren't always obvious, and they certainly aren't always intentional. Sometimes they don't reveal themselves until much later.
That's where a lot of the good stuff happens.
CREATIVITY GIVES FORM TO IMAGINATION
Eventually, all of that noticing, wondering, and connecting has to go somewhere.
For me, creativity is the process of giving form to what imagination can see.
Sometimes that form is a painting, drawing, photograph, or piece of design. Sometimes it is a lesson, a conversation, or an idea passed from one person to another. It doesn't always have to be something you can hang on a wall or put in a portfolio.
Everything we've noticed, everything we've experienced, everything we've imagined, and all of the strange connections we've made along the way eventually find their way into what we make.
And then something happens that I find even more interesting.
We put the work out into the world.
Someone else sees the painting. They interact with the design. They hear the idea. They bring their own experiences, memories, questions, and assumptions to it. They may see something we never intended. They may make a connection we never considered.
And that's okay.
Because they saw something.
They noticed.
And there it is again:
A new observation.
The process begins again.
Observation. Imagination. Connection. Creativity.
Not four steps to follow, but four things that continually feed one another. We notice something, imagine what it might become, make connections, and give those connections form.
Then we put that work back into the world, where someone else sees it through their own eyes.
And the whole damn thing starts again.