by Norma Jean Bishop

Created on: April 17, 2008

What is creativity? It is the ability to bring something new into the world. The creative person is a parent, and the creation is a child, in whatever form - a work of art, a plant, a song, a meal, a poem. This may resemble something that has already existed, but the individual spark of newness - what poet Dylan Thomas called "singing light" - illuminates it from inside.

Creativity cannot be taught but it can be learned. Exposure to beauty is often a source of creativity. Practice and the joy in creation lead to further creations. The intermingling of creative souls can lead to new heights of creativity. Marginality may lead to creativity "necessity is the mother of invention" we say.

Creative people are often tormented in some way. They see things differently, feel things differently, feel the need to express themselves. Leonardo da Vinci was able to imagine his world in new ways, to go beyond what he was taught in Verrocchio's Florentine workshop and express himself as a scientist as well as an artist. (Often creative people go beyond disciplinary boundaries.) Some have speculated that Leonardo's originality may have resulted from being an illegitimate child, perhaps even the child of a slave woman, and have noted as well that he was left-handed (often left-handed people are found to be creative or pioneering).

All of us are born with potentiality, but in many people this potentiality is snuffed out. Others, such as Charles Dickens, are un-snuffable. Despite his miserable childhood, or perhaps because of it, Dickens was able to create novel after novel filled with fascinating personalities drawn from his experience. Camille Claudel, despite her secondary role alongside her lover the sculptor Rodin, succeeded in expressing her own artistic vision.

Creativity should not be confined to artistic and literary talents, since it takes creativity to do anything well. To build a computer program, design a well-functioning economic system, teach students in a new and enlightening way all these call on creativity. Each person must find their own form of self-expression. Raising children is one of the most creative acts imaginable, and yet so often this role begins as a mere accident of passion.

It takes love to pursue the creative act from start to finish.

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