Creative courage

Reflected Glory, 20x20"

The other day in the studio I was listening to a Public Radio article on creativity while I painted. I'm sorry I can't credit the producer or any of the sources referred to in the article - I was in my painting brain, weighing colors and shapes, hearing the broadcast resonated through my own thoughts and intuitions about what I was doing. What I heard was that many CEOs nowadays seek employees who are not what we used to call "company people." Instead they realize that people who think and perform in ways outside the norm tend to have the ideas needed to propel their company forward through fast-changing times and technologies. Creative people. These people, they find, make lots of mistakes.  Who would have thought 30 years ago that people who do things in unusual ways and make a lot of mistakes would now be prized as corporate employees? Turns out, it's people who are OK taking risks, even if it means making mistakes now and then, are the same ones who innovate the billion-dollar ideas. And these smart CEOs are giving these creative people the license to invent new ways and risk making some mistakes without fear of being fired for it - and this is paying off. Think Zuckerberg, if you will.

That's why it's so vital to fund arts education in schools: it provides our children with multiple alternative approaches to life's problems. Frees them to search other parts of their brains besides the logical left lobe to look for new ways, and to experiment until something works.

Here's the thing: until we let go of our fear of failing - until we risk making a mistake, losing our way, having a great idea turn into a mess of soggy paper and a night of lost sleep, we aren't free to access our full creative power. Fear turns creative passion to icy sludge.

And I thought: That's what I've been telling my students. Well, maybe not in so many words - but it was what I was trying to give them: permission to listen to their creative intuition, and to try. And to fail. And to try again.

We've all been there. What creative people do - what you do - when faced with a problem, is look fear in the eye - and rock on.