The Creative Playground - Ralph Ammer

Creativity is play, but for shadow artists, learning to allow themselves to play is hard work.

‘Focusing the creative energy on a narrower field of exploration allows for a more in-depth processing of fewer alternatives. Once a frame is in place, the focus can shift to creating something memorable within it.’

The creative soul simply needs a trusted empty space in which to try things out unobserved and make mistakes. It needs a boundary – even if it is psychological – to keep the world at bay.

Real creativity comes from finding your medium, from being in your element. When people find their medium, they discover their real creative strengths and come into their own. Genuine creativity is not only a matter of letting go but of holding on.

Constraints can be liberating. When you're doing creative work, the total space of all possibilities is so vast that it’s unworkable. You have to carve off one tiny little sector, and think inside the box. The same is true when you zoom out to the scale of an entire life, but this is not obvious until all the constraints are removed: you don’t know