As I was deciding this week what to write about, I could not stop thinking about creativity. Perhaps this is because my great friend and I have been on a painting journey the past month or two. This is through a company or organization called “Paint Nite”. There is an instructor there that walks you through how to do a particular painting, like a landscape or giant flower, or some such thing, and you try your best and learn some techniques. I know I will never be good enough to hang these on the wall (even though you take a vow to say you will never say such things about your painting), but there is something compelling about it, and it is very enjoyable and relaxing. So much so, that we are now planning to work on these paintings at home 😊.

It makes me wonder about what life would be like without creativity? Would we be more animalistic? Creativity is one of the important aspects of humans that separates us from the animals. As far as I know a bird has not thought about making its nest into a shape other than what its entire species does, an eagle does not make a second floor to the nest “to have some personal space” or with leafy branches to give the nest some “warmth” or “personality”.

What my friend and I have discovered, is that we have begun to look at the environment a little differently. We discussed how the water in a river really looks, the tones and colors in it depending on what is around it, where the light source comes from and how the light affects the colors in the environment that we see. It is very fun, and as I struggled with making clouds, I found myself looking at them in the sky more and realized that some of the clouds I painted really do look like some clouds in the sky!! How amazing is that!

Discussing this with my family, I hear from some (aka my aunt Sharon) that she does not want to try painting because she can’t even draw a stick figure 😊. Confidence and stubbornness are perhaps other reasons people don’t try different creative outlets. I am sure you have met these people, if they don’t get it right the first time, they don’t try it again, or if they don’t think they can do it, they won’t try. Well, all to be said about that is, you have to learn to have fun, and not worry about getting it right the first time, if you truly do not like it, then at least you can say confidently you don’t if you have at least tried it. For example, I tried knitting and crocheting, and I gave it a good go, but I found that I could not keep track of the number of stitches, and I really don’t care to, so that was not for me, but there are many more fun creative things to try.

In today’s busy world there seems to be less and less time for creative hobbies or for developing and discovering our talent and we lose a little bit of “play time”. This is tragic, really as a lot of your personality and thoughts come out in creative projects, even if you are following a pattern, you have chosen a pattern for a reason. It is what you like. Some people cannot help but express themselves in creative ways and they are seen as artists, but it makes you wonder about the rest of us and where our creative part of our brain is applied in our life. It may be applied in the things we buy for our home, the way we dress, the art we choose to buy or stop and look at, even perhaps the things we cook or bake if we have taken a bit of extra time presenting it. Sometimes creative things are not seen as art by the general public for a long time, but our perceptions change about it over time as we continue on our human creativity journey. This has happened down through the centuries, as you can see more clearly in painting with the different art styles that have developed, but it is also is in architecture, clothing, music and literature with the different genres progressing. Not sure this came out properly, but an example of this is graffiti. It was condemned for a long time, but now people are looking at it differently, as most of it is a person expressing some personality, thought, emotion, etc. Not all graffiti is art, obviously, but a lot of it is if you take the time to really look at it. It makes you wonder what humans will consider as art in the future.