Creativity and our relationship to it

Over Christmas I travelled to New Zealand to visit friends and family. Whilst I was there I had the opportunity to meet two French HelpX workers, participants in a program where people from around the world provide their labour to hosts in exchange for room and board.

These two and a friend of my mother's were staying at her home when I decided to organise a 'paint and sip' evening for everyone.

I rummaged around our family craft room for art supplies and paper and came up with a variety of paints, pencils, pastel crayons and markers to work with.

We popped open a bottle of bubbly and set to work.

My mother, in her bold, indomitable style, set to work with watercolours. She quickly filled three pages with a riot of of colours then went through each piece, sketching the outlines of animals and plants she saw, suggested by her sweeps of paint. She commented several times that she felt what she was doing was rubbish. But I noted, admiring her, that she persisted with the exercise.

I carefully divided a circle into equidistant segments in order to create an Art Nouveau inspired Mandela, working with several pieces of reference.

My mother's friend used watercolours to create bright, carefully painted shapes in warm tones. As she worked, she explained that her executed piece fell short of the vision she had in her mind and that she wrestled with perfectionism. However, she too persisted.

One of our French friends, himself a talented artist, brought several professional-grade markers down from his room and created two new ideas for a series of posters he has been selling online. They promote his hometown, the city of Abondance near the Swiss border in France. (Click here for a link to his website.)

Our final group member, a young engineer from Normandy arrived at the table last. He appeared uncertain asking questions about the parameters of the exercise.

When told the only limitations were that of his imagination he appeared perturbed.

Reluctantly he began to draw, producing a freeform drawing in muted tones then a pencil sketch of a mountain range.

There were lots of jokes told, discussions and wine devoured over the course of the evening. I tried to provide encouragement as some of our group battled with self-critical thoughts as they worked. But at its end, everyone thanked me for my insistence on their participation.

My mother's friend and the engineer escaped with their pieces, whilst Mum discarded her three works letting me take them. The artist took a photo also allowing me to keep his.

I was struck by the tremendous diversity of the work.

My carefully pencilled Mandela, (which required a further ten hours to complete), was as different to the sweeping strokes of my mother's work as one of the French pointillists to the work of Jackson Pollock. The bright hues of our friend's work contrasted with the muted tones of the engineer. And the artist's sketches? They were in a class of their own.

I marvelled that each piece. Though very unique, every approach had merit.

But what really intrigued me was each person's attitude to their own creativity.

My mother and her friend were openly self-critical. And the engineer quickly removed his work from the collective gaze, even though in its very conception and execution, it was something to be proud of.

It was only really the artist and myself, two people used to pushing our egos aside and getting on with creative work that seemed truly comfortable in this space, (or at least didn't put a voice to our discomfort).

I can't tell you how many times I've been told, "Oh, I'm not creative," by friends, relatives and even strangers. And yet I find the statement contradictory.

One of my sisters is a person who says this from time to time. But she's a gifted teacher who connects with and inspires her young students in incredibly creative ways, is a comedian, produces sculpted cakes that would be the envy of the finest patisseries and is actually a dab hand at embroidery.

The engineer from our paint and sip night also hinted at a similar thing. And yet he is part of a profession that uses maths, design and physics to provide solutions to human problems such as the creation of housing, electrical grids, hospital equipment, car and safety measures on a daily basis. Creative? In my mind, absolutely!

One of the issues around our relationship to creativity may be in how we define the word. The Oxford dictionary describes it as 'the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness.' So literally, using our imaginations to produce something is creativity, regardless of the form it takes.

I believe human beings are an inherently creative species. Early evidence such as the invention of bone tools, smoke holes and stone entryways to improve cave dwellings abound. Our propensity to create music, dance, art, food, and in recent times, AI which can in turn create, is further evidence of the workings of our extraordinary minds.

Which makes me think, what stops people from thinking they are creative?

I remember at kindergarten, virtually all the kids took a turn at the painting easels. Was it the response of parents and caregivers to their efforts that stopped some from playing in this particular section of the creative paddling pool?

Whatever it is or was, I think it's sad.

In New Zealand, I went to a pottery painting studio. Its owner expressed how much she heard the "I'm not creative," line whilst constantly being blown away by what these supposedly 'non-creative' people produced.

I can understand reticence, when it comes to creativity. Even for those of us who do it often, the ego can scream, loudly. Internal dialogue such as "What do you think you're doing?" and "This is crap, you're crap" can derail our efforts. But I honestly think it's important, vital even, to push it aside and persist.

In my work with the disadvantaged, I often find myself telling struggling young people,

"You know that voice in your head? You realise you can tell it to shut up, don't you?"

And it works! Once they smack down their gibbering, screaming internal voice, it's amazing what they are able to achieve.

I must admit, I have to shove my ego aside a lot, and I have to work hard to do it.

When I'm attempting to create something and that voice starts berating me inside my head, I repeatedly tell it to shut up. Because it's on the other side of that noise, in the place of creative discomfort that the alchemy occurs and we find out what we're truly capable of.