Connection

Creativity isn't measured by willingness to say "No" or knowledge of the creative process. Creativity is measured by your willingness to say "why not?"

Children posses some of the most powerful imagination because they aren't bogged down by the creative process. I remember this one time when my brother's and I took our stuffed Pound Puppies and created a zip line for them to zoom across. I'm not sure why we did it, but I remember it being very fun at the time.



It's amazing what ideas you can come up with when you don't bother to say "No" or ask why.

Conclusion

When you're all passion, you get a very creative idea, but unharnessed, it doesn't serve much of a purpose. Conversely, An artist can get so caught up into the process, that all the passion dries up, and what's left is a well thought-out idea that contains no heart.

For me, good art requires a balance between the two. I need to use the lessons, tools, and techneques I've learned here at school and apply them -- all while not forgetting how to harness that same passion I contained as a child.

"Starving [Elephant] Artist"

I found this amazing and it reminded me a lot of the young panther in Kafka's story.

Can your elephant paint? Watch this elephant, rescued from abusive treatment in Burma, now paint an amazing self portrait. You'll be amazed at how his talent unfolds.

So touched by their horrific backgrounds and loving personalities, ExoticWorldGifts.com now supports, "Starving Elephant Artisans" by selling their paintings so they can continue to have a new life in Thailand.

The elephant, like the panther, represents a pure passionate artist. This creature may indeed be self-aware of what it is creating, but it never questions why, it merely enjoys.

An Impossible Dream

Being an artist is usually something people do in their spare time...for fun. To pursue it as a career or life interest borders on the absurd.

Although many may not see the point of art, it plays a hugely important role in our lives. Stories, music, film, poetry, painting and the like are as biologically important as eating or sleeping. Our imagination is what separates us from other creatures.

More Thoughts

I think myself, like many young artists, reach a point where they start to ask, "Wait, why am I doing this again?" Once I filled on the pure enjoyment of the process, I felt empty -- hungry for something else, one might say. It wasn't a desire for enjoyment anymore. It started to become a quest for purpose. It wasn't enough just to create pretty images. I asked the question, "why art?".

I don't think most people take art very seriously, or understand it. It's hard for a non-artist to appreciate what goes into a work of art -- just as a non-engineer cannot comprehend what goes into building a skyscraper. In Kafka's story, nobody understood the art except the artist himself. The Hunger Artist was reduced to a sideshow attraction.



Van Gogh is probably consider the quintessential hunger artist. He got no recognition in his lifetime, yet he surged with a passion for his work.

Art can be especially frustrating because it tends to take a long time. Anything thats worth making will take much thought and effort. It can be even more frustrating when you get no recognition at all. When that happens, the artist feels worthless, and without purpose the artist no longer has passion for his/her art. It dies.

I don't know if It's just me, but I NEED an audience. I create art with much more passion when I know someone else is going to get something out of it, if only a moment of entertainment. I perform better with an audience for the same reason theatrical actors perform more intensely on opening night as opposed to a rehearsal. The same is true in sports if you compare a practice with no audience versus a playoff game in a packed arena.

An Early Artist

A few weeks ago, three children came to the upstairs lobby accompanied by their mother to sell girl scout cookies. As I enjoyed my delicious thin mints, I spied two of the kids drawing. The unquestioning confidence with which they put pencil to paper grabbed my attention. It wasn't like they were being over critical, and conversely, they weren't treating their drawings as being precious. For them, it was all about the enjoyment. How could this be?

I tried thinking way back to what I first drew: spaceships, cartoon characters from TV -- similar stuff to what these kids were drawing. I remember sketching with the same confidence, using imagination, playing around and having fun. Somewhere along the line some of that was lost. I feel as though I'm questioning my own ability so much that I can't possibly create anything worthwhile, and find myself not enjoying the process.

Can a 'hunger artist' such as myself harness the passion these children seem to naturally possess? I know that I once did:



The image here is one of my brother and me playing with legos when we were younger. In those years we would create countless impressive creations of our own design. Back then, there was nothing more enjoyable than playing with logos, filming our own movies, even creating stop-motion animations. We were playing around.


My brother and I creating one of our legendary snow forts.


Me crafting something in the wood shop in the basement.

Then the idea came, "what if I could do this sort of thing for a living? Wouldn't that be the greatest job in the world?" True, it was a distant dream, and I had no idea how to actually make it happen, but it was there all the same -- floating in the back of my mind.