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"...and also unlock the intuitive sense that comes from mastery." To me, unlocking that aesthetic intuition is the essence of creativity. The other component -- which I recognize most people lack -- is an open-mindedness and willingness to experiment and find art in unexpected places. But even if you have that, you still need the mastery, at least in most disciplines. If you create lots of sculpture, you'll encounter lots of "problems." And if you persevere, you'll discover lots of "solutions" -- whether they are intended results or happy accidents. Mastery in the arts is simply accumulating a sufficiently large library of problems/solutions, and encountering them often enough that they become mental muscle memory, so that you begin to see potential high-level solutions in the world around you. I believe the art we find most "creative" is, counterintuitively, the art that is discovered or stumbled upon by masters who have developed the skill to spot, excavate, and refine it. (Like Michelangelo seeing his sculpture "emerge" from the marble -- I don't think it was the mystical process it's often made out to be, but rather him recognizing the maximum potential of each quirk of the marble, and intuitively seeing how those potentials might combine into an image.) Contrast that with an artist's attempt to make something "from the ground up," based solely on the application of learned principles. The result may be beautiful or masterful, but probably won't have that true creative spark. Great art often makes people think "I never would of thought to do that," which to me is kind of tragic, because they may get discouraged from pursuing art, without realizing that the artist never "thought to do that," either. The artist just had the open-mindedness to look around, the developed intuition to spot it, and the technical skill to build it out. |