The Creative Mind

“I didn’t discover I was an artist until I was 17… It was very hard to be an artist and a child… it was like having sand up your butt when you go to the beach.”

One of the most interesting details shared in the graphic above is the information about the Princeton University Study which demonstrated that the brain of a person telling a story and the brain a...

To be a successful creative, you need to not only be a good generator, but also a good evaluator. The problem is that in practice, it’s remarkably hard to be both. By switching between Promotion and Prevention focuses we can generate our best ideas.

Illustration: Oscar Ramos Orozco

How does being a mother affect a creative woman, especially someone engaged in a career in the arts?

“The motherhood thing – I think of it like a marathon, except a marathon is over in a day. It’s an endurance test and it’s something you absolutely can’t stop for a second" Filmmaker Caren McCaleb

The image is from a new documentary Lost in Living – “the story of four extraordinary women who share their personal triumphs and struggles as mothers and as artists..."

Do you remember how much you felt and thought as a child? Probably a lot, especially if you were gifted and creative. As an adult, we may have learned to cover up or set aside much of our inner life, in order to get along with others and do our jobs.

But if we want to be more fully alive and creative, it can really help to understand and stay in charge of our thinking and feelings.

“If you want to make money, better drop out right now, go to banking school, or website school – anywhere but art school. And remember, only 1 out of 100 of you will ever make a living as an artist.”

Professor Sandiford  [John Malkovich, in Art School Confidential (2006)]

How do you respond to feelings and thinking about your creative talents and success, after hearing ideas from others such as pronouncements of supposed authorities like the fictional Professor Sandiford above? Or even your own inner voice?

Multiple psychologists and writers note a strong association between the personality trait of introversion and creativity.

Science journalist Winifred Gallagher: “The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and artistic achievement. Neither E = mc2 nor Paradise Lost was dashed off by a party animal.”

topics include:

Lessons for Creative Dreamers

Barnet Bain interview

A Complex Personality

Mental Health Telesummit 

Are people who write, create illustrations and movies and other artwork highly respected, in high demand and getting great compensation?

The Creativity Post Co-founder Scott Barry Kaufman talks about the importance of passion, inspiration, play, and creativity.

By Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D.

"Creative thinking is influenced by many traits, behaviors, and sociocultural factors that come together in one person. It would be surprising if all of these factors didn't sometimes appear to contradict one another."

"Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" - Walt Whitman

Many people find the question What’s your passion? to be useless or fearful. Author Daniel Pink finds the question daunting, even almost paralyzing.

Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist, has quoted Steve Jobs, who cited Picasso’s apocryphal line, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” No one knows for sure exactly what Picasso meant (or, for that matter, if he ever even spoke those words), but what is not in dispute is that Picasso was very clever when it came to theft. Instead of stealing from the celebrated artists of his day, which would have made him a second-rate version of Cézanne or Van Gogh, Picasso stole ideas from artists far outside his own milieu.

“If there is one word that makes creative people different from others, it is the word complexity." Creativity researcher and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

According to a biographer, Einstein was “A man, bourgeois and bohemian, superman and misbehaved child, all in one person… a friend to one, an enemy to another, a narcissist ignoring his outer appearance, a sonnyboy and a rebel, a philanthropist and autistic individual, a globetrotter and a hermit, a pacifist and a scientist for the military.”

Looking to get those creative juices flowing? Whether it’s writing a short story, finding out the latest on multi-disciplinarian creative initiatives or drawing a portrait, we have compiled a list of some of the most creative websites to help you think outside of the box. Feel free to add to the list and tell us about more sites that inspire creativity!

One of the poignant comments by Liv Ullman in this video: "Working with Ingmar Bergman allows me to use everything which is creative within me. He probably has allowed me to use as much as I know about my craft… He allows me to be challenged and if I am not, it's my fault."