Creativity is the basis of self-expression. Why are some people supposedly more creative than others, and why can’t others open themselves up enough to be able to express who they are?
Creation is the birth of something, and something cannot come from nothing. When someone creates something: a painting, a poem, a photograph, the creativity comes from an idea, from a feeling, from emotion, or from a combination of ideas, feelings and emotions that are somehow ‘reborn’ from all our experiences and perspectives.
Creativity is the desire to express ourselves. To formulate these expressions, we have to draw from our reservoir of experience, dreams, desires and experimentation and mix together what was, what is, and what could be… I don’t think you can learn it, it is rather something that evolves. Your perception of everything in your life fills up this reservoir.
Some people are drawn to create and express themselves, others are drawn to reflect, to analyze. But in the end, they all could be creative if they had the desire to explore the way in which they are integrated in the world of their experiences. Because creativity is really a rebirth, a true tone we feel for ourselves and for our world. Then our work becomes a real part of who we are. Maybe all this is a question of how deep we are willing to go…
—Peter Lindbergh Creativity (via i-dont-have-time-to-die)
Great Thought Leaders
These are the people who have influenced my thinking the most over the past two years, listed in no particular order:
Click on their names to see some of their most compelling work. I hope their knowledge will ad as much value to your life as it did to mine when I first stumbled upon it.
Originality depends on new and striking combinations of ideas. It is obvious therefore that the more a man knows the greater scope he has for arriving at striking combinations. And not only the more he knows about his own subject but the more he knows beyond it of other subjects. It is a fact that has not yet been sufficiently stressed that those persons who have risen to eminence in arts, letters or sciences have frequently possessed considerable knowledge of subjects outside their own sphere of activity.
—An Anatomy of Inspiration by music historian Rosamund E. M. Harding (1899-1982)
(Source: brainpickings.org)
If I get up every day with the optimism that I have the capacity for growth, then that’s success for me.
—Paula Scher
Unsolicited Evaluation Is The Enemy Of Creativity
“In physically demanding tasks, like lifting heavy weights, and in tedious tasks, like counting beans, we do better when we are being evaluated than when we are not. But in tasks that require creativity, or new insights, or new learning, we do better when we are not being evaluated—when we are just playing, not stressed, not afraid of failure.”
Creativity 'closely entwined with mental illness'
“Creativity is often part of a mental illness, with writers particularly susceptible, according to a study of more than a million people.”
