Ahhh, to be an Artist. The torture, the darkness, the anxiety of creating–these emotions fuel us to make our greatest masterpieces. Right. Right?
WRONG. You do not have to be a maniac, depressed, or a tortured soul to be creative & make Art.
Thinking that you have to be moved by the darkness to create is a great myth perpetuated over and over and over since the Enlightenment era of Art (circa 1700-1800).
In short, during the age of Enlightenment thinkers, writers, doers, and makers felt the next wave, the progressive side, of doing things was to take spirit out of all thinking.
To take mysticism, joy, the creative impulse out of thoughts and creations was the next big thing, in 1700.
And, for better or for worse, we, in Western culture, have carried this myth into almost all of our arty-ness. Heck, I’ll even say we have taken the spiritual out of much of all of our daily life because we think we can do it all by the power of our very own brains (that’s another blog post topic, soon to be written!).
We have seen Art and smooshed the spiritual creativity out of it so much ~ that often when we feel that impulse to create, we often feel guilty or selfish.
We have gone so deeply into our brains about the process of creativity that we have separated it from the whole of our being.
I have heard this idea, that creativity is guilty pleasure, more than once in conversations during my creativity coaching sessions, and in my conversations with fellow creators.
I am here to remind you: you were given life and the ability to create in order to use it ~ today is the day ~ let creativity into your life!
Personally, what drives me to create is the desire to bring a deeper sense of beauty into life.
Tweet this one: I #create because I believe in beauty.
In the end, we all experience the ups and downs of life. But my point here is this: you don’t have to be tortured, to be rational, or to be guilty for being creative.
Creativity is and always will be an expression of the human spirit’s best ability. Let’s start a new spiritual creativity movement, yes?
So tell me, what do you think find beauty in creating today?