Posts Tagged ‘creativity’

Crayons and Creativity

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

I got my crayons out again yesterday. Caught up in the online surge of creativity (you know who you are!) and with an unexpected spare day, I re-discovered my watercolour pencils and an art bin that dates back about 18 years. It was fun. Unexpectedly so. I can’t really draw, but it was good to explore with no expectations. To lose myself, for a while, in colours and shapes and ‘oh, I wonder what that would look like’.

Art is one of the activities that got sidelined when my eating disorder barged in. It’s a perfect example of how all-consuming the whole thing is. How it manages to get everywhere.
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Originality

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Last night I went to a lecture, by Ian McEwan, on Originality.

I wasn’t sure what pearls of wisdom I had taken away, at first; but overnight, the ideas seem to have been infusing and fusing so that, this morning, I woke up with an understanding of what is encapsulated in originality – and a strange sense of reassurance that, in this field (and by default), we have already won.

Which is an interesting conclusion to reach from a lecture that pointed out how important it is to be first past the post (and not just in parliamentary terms); and how intrinsically human it is to want to stand out.

We are – and have been for generations – the same; and yet we are also – and each – fundamentally different.
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Art as Therapy

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Last night, I was painting plates.

Art wasn’t this therapeutic when I was painting feelings.

I think I might have been missing the point – or just getting too hung up on it. When you’re trying to draw the perfect tragedy, it doesn’t really work; and, if you’re doing something because it’s ‘part of the programme’, it can feel a little bit like you’re back at school –

Painting plates, however, is a whole different ball game to psychiatric ward Blue Peter or the hardcore art therapy that, along with the plastic chairs and patronisation, was hard to take seriously. It is, instead, about having fun and being creative and doing something different – which is a therapy in itself.
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