Musical creative stimulants

Abstract Impressionist Painter Arshile Gorky taught at the Grand Central School of Art in New York. He employed a violinist to play during his classes to encourage students to allow their paintings to be more evocative.

What kind of music do/can you use to stimulate your creative work?

Do different pieces of music evoke different creative moods or levels of productivity?

Can you choose specific musicians or bands to evoke specific feelings to help you with your latest creative project?

Experiment with a variety of music at different volumes and see what affect it has on your creative work...

My life as a paperclip...

One of the most fundamental ways of being creative is the ability to see situations from different points of view, through a different set of senses.

A simple way to do this is with the following exercise -

Pick a random object in your room. It could be a cup, a paperclip, a chair, anything that's relatively close to hand and that draws you in some way at this precise moment.

Choose something quickly without analysing your decision.

Now, imagine spending a day in the life of this object.

Beginning with early morning, write out, or just imagine in your mind, how it feels to be this object.

Experience the object's viewpoint, see things from its perspective in as detailed a way as you possibly can.

For example if you chose a paperclip, imagine how it feels to be picked up by a human hand, the warmth of flesh against your cool steel.

Or how it feels as you slide down crisp white pages of paper, the sound it makes and the friction it generates.

Get into the senses of the object as deeply as possibly and consider all the activities and situations the object may experience in a typical day.

The more you can do this for a variety of objects, the more you'll open up your senses to different possibilities and this in turn, will fuel an increase in your creativity...

Creative threads

Imagine that your life was a set of clothes, a complete outfit.

Each different garment is one part of your life, one of the areas that is most important to you.

And each piece of clothing does not necessarily match with every other piece in the conventional way.

(Who wants to wear an all beige suit anyway?!)

The clothing of your life makes up the unique person you are, in all your colours, variety and complexity.

So where does creativity fit into all this?

Your creativity is simply the thread that holds the clothing of your life all together. Without these threads you'd simply be draped in random pieces of disparate rags, a walking disintegrating patchwork quilt!

It's your creativity that holds it all together. It's your creativity that allows you to fit all these parts, all these individual pieces of clothing together, and then co-ordinate them into the complete outfit that is your life.

The more you trust your creativity and let it bind your various parts together into a powerful whole, the more comfortable you'll feel in your clothes.

Being stylish is one thing, but surely the most important thing we all strive for in clothes and in our life, is a fit that's right for us, and that helps us to feel comfortable, confident and good about ourselves?

Maybe it's time you spring-cleaned your own wardrobe...

Rejecting perfectionism!

Trying to be perfect in creative works or in anything in our lives can often lead to much frustration and stress.

Here's an interesting take on the idea from painter Paul Gardner -

"A painting is never finished. It simply stops in interesting places."