When I am taking pictures I like to move. And I like it best if everything else is moving too. I try to never say, Hold it right there...got it! I just look and move and snap. The process and the portrait then reflect a kind of truth that interest me.
Yesterday we had 15 minutes before an aikido class. We were in a neighborhood where I wanted to grab a few pictures. I said to the kids, "Come on, out of the car, hurry." And we ran and I snapped and they asked questions while I shouted answers and they tried to guess where I was headed and what I was doing. And then it was over and we ran back to the car. We felt a bit like bandits. It was great rollicking fun.
Someday, if any of those pictures are worth saving, they might look at them. They might remember our glee and understand something visceral about creativity. I hope they grow up thinking that art is something anyone can do. I hope they grow up thinking that art comes from inside you, not from a set of instructions. And mostly, I hope they equate the adult process with terrific fun, something that can occasionally be done in 15 extra minutes, spontaneously, or even almost constantly. Art is an event and a thought process as much as a product. Can you even say when its over? I hope not.
Why does it occasionally feel illicit? Because sometimes you have to defy what you thought you knew, what you thought you saw, or what you thought you weren't allowed to do in order to be creative. Where, on this wild free earth, could we possibly learn that we shouldn't think, see, and do? How long must you hold a child down to break them of their natural creativity? It is a slippery slope, this question. We all need boundaries. But we all need creativity as well.
How do you nurture creativity in your family?
1 comment:
I give myself permission to play and have them see me create for the joy of it and of course they mimic that. Also, I buy decent supplies and we all use the same. Not top rate stuff, but not the 'kid' versions either. (Not that I don't cringe sometimes...)
We mix art 'lessons' with free expression. Learning a skill expands the tools you have available to create. I feel like happiness is based on learning the balance between creative freedom and societal boundaries.
My mom was the queen of granting permission to do the absurd. Everything from letting us use her yarn to turn the office into a giant spider web room, to painting our walls however and whenever we wanted to. It shaped me into an adult that believes the term 'artist' is a state of mind, not a title.
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