Hello my dear!
You’re an artist!*
*But perhaps you don’t know it yet.
You just need to be curious about something, and that “something” can be anything, according to art critic Will Gompertz in his last book “Think like an artist”. Creativity isn’t a privilege of the art geniuses, but is present in every human being.
Everybody’s a genius and so are YOU. đŸ™‚
“We’re all artists. We just have to believe it. That’s what artists do.” [Gompertz]
According to Gompertz we all have the ability to think about abstract concepts. We all have imagination and creativity. An despite of that we tend to elevate the artist to a supernatural talent, which he isn’t. Big artists aren’t supernatural talents. They just have been able to get the most out of their creativity, do a lot of work, and got maybe even some help from their environment.
All you have to do is to open yourself for your creative impulses. “Creativity means: have great ideas and realize it”, which means you have to believe in your creativity, in your ability to produce good ideas and get to work with them.
Gompertz has observed a lot of artists and has found they have the following characteristics in common (I have changed them a bit …) :
- be sincerely CURIOUS: you’ve got to be interested in something, in anything. That’s the starting point. When you can channel your curiosity you’ll be able to express yourself.
- be enterprising and committed: if you want to live from your art you’ve got to be interested in marketing and sell yourself and do a load of WORK.
- don’t fail : when an artist fails he celebrates by learning from his mistakes
- take the time to think
- be critical
- be brave enough to go in the arena and to fall. In reality we’re most of the time just being cowards: we want to share our ideas to the world but we’re afraid to get nasty comments. Even if your book/ your company/ your painting can’t be saved anymore from bad critics you can get back up! And you’ll have learned from the failure. Or like BrenĂ© Brown says in her book “rising strong”: “if we are brave enough, often enough, we will fall”. Modesty is a hand break to your creativity.
- Think in big entities and small details : the small detail is the focus point in the painting: the “entry” to the whole picture.
- be skeptical
- steal ideas: all artists steal ideas from other artists, and it has always been that way. A lot of artists started their career by copying “their Masters”. Or like old Greek Aristotle said “copying is creating”. A good artist (even scientists do it) steals an idea and builds his further creation on it. Everything has been done before. A good idea is supported by something that exists already.
- have your own point of view
These 10 rules apply also to scientists, engineers, marketeers, CEO’s, lawyers,… for everybody who wants to contribute to make this world a bit better.
Easier said than done, of course…………………
Which of the rules apply to you? And which rule do you find the most difficult? I’m curious!
