Thought Row Blog — creativity

  Stupid Statements Put Forth About Creativity: You’re creative and you know it. You also know it can be hard and difficult. What you hear others say, and what you say to yourself robs you of what I like to call "Thought Power." It's the power to think independently of clichés. My two favorites are, "writer's block," and "starving artist." There's a whole bunch more to choose from. Perhaps you have favorites that you use when referring to your own creative self. You may want to give that self-talk, a talking to if it's not elevating your creative self-esteem. Outside...

  The Interpretive Side Of Non-Interpretive Art: What is this painting all about? You might say it's a disentanglement by me from my usual style, that I call Receptive Abstract Patternernism. There is an obvious interpretive element in this work. The three trees are floating on an island in a sea of blue with a thousand whitecaps. The earth-brown shape that corrals the ocean is dotted with green nonrepresentational foliage. Not too terribly complicated when you take the time to view the work. But it could be more interesting if there was a story to go with it. . The...

Me on Writing: I write my way in… and I write my way out, gallivanting all about with pedantic prose. Or at least that's what I would like you and everyone to think. The undercurrent of truth starts with me being saddled with a condition that's not all that uncommon these days. But back when I was in my most informative years, my learning disability was simply diagnosed as "this poor child is dumb." At the time, not too many people were kind enough to use the phrase, "the child has an addled brain." Which I probably would not have...

  What Makes Creativity Creative?: "I'll know it when I see it." I often heard my commercial photography clients make this nervy comment. I have to say; with some amusement, I didn't see that portrayed very often. Creativity is subjectively deceiving; ask a dozen or more people what creativity is. And you will become inundated with a plethora of fanciful responses. Some of those will be downright brilliant. Generally, from those who live lives filled with creativity. Unfortunately, most will be speculative, with little or no real understanding of what it means to be creative. That's okay because the world...