Creativity

Edwin said that there's no such thing as group originality or group creativity. He goes, "I do believe wholeheartedly in the individual capacity for greatness." And he says, "Originality are attributes of a single mind, not a group."

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.

— Robert Hughes, 1996

Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”

In the words of neuroscientist Gregory Berns, “only when you consciously confront your brain’s reliance on categories will you be able to imagine outside of its boundaries.” Venturing out of the mind’s perimeter of comfort, in a constant quest for the unknown, liminal creators keep on fueling their imagination by exploring the gray areas that live... See more

I even resisted sitting at a desk, so my studio mates rarely saw me, and most of my work was done in nature, underneath trees, by the water, and sometimes in cafés, galleries, and the botanical garden. And the rest was a vast, empty space that I didn’t know how to navigate any more than I knew how to start drawing from a blank piece of paper.

Bob Dylan on the otherworldliness of creativity (2004) “I don’t know how I got to write those songs. Those early songs were almost magically written.” It is reminiscent of how mathematical discoveries tend to speak themselves—not to the experienced—but to the young. Show more