A Theory of Creativity* the books that made me* 10x10 watercolors*

10x10 watercolors*

I recently finished a 10x10 learning of watercolor.  

1. I used my old cheap watercolors.  
2. I did exercises from a book I bought in a Cambridge bookstore/art store while we were in Boston NCTE last year, the first 10 (except for one absurd one that was the back of a bunny).  
3. Some were just exercises to learn things -- like the blue lines and the yellow and red shapes.
4. Many were practices water-color skills -- like wet in wet (the starlings), leaving white space for highlights (carrots, lemon)
5. The blue was not from the book, actually.  It was just my own reproduction of a Trader Joe's greeting card that I had bought awhile back. 
6. Each one took about 30 minutes.  There was a process of getting 3 bottles of water, finding some paper, often putting on some music.  I did them at my office desk.
7. They were never a burden, nor did I especially look forward to them through the day, thinking "I can't wait until I get to."  But the habit, the wanting to "finishing" things (one of the main reasons for the concept of the 10x10s in the first place, was enough to pull me through.  And while I never looked forward to it, I was almost always challenged, engaged pretty fully with a new skill, and sometimes pleased.  I was pleased with the organic shapes that I sketched.  
8. I had the sense that some parts of it were hard for me.  The leaves were not easy.  I told myself several times not to worry about the product, just continue 
9. I thought that my "sketching skills" would be terrible and childish... and I surprised myself that they were not as terrible as I thought.  Often I was pleased that it didn't look childish.  I was frustrated a bit at my skills of doing stems, when it immediately got too thick.
10. My biggest area of need, I think, is my color creation.  I struggled to create colors that seemed very good (with the exception of the blues and yellows that came right out of the paint tray.... I did an OK job with adding WATER to create various intensities, but the mixing was never satisfactory.  That should be the next focus of my next 10x10.

The books that made me

“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” 

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Carl Rogers On Becoming a Person "Toward a Theory of Creativity"

In addition, it should be pointed out that our definition makes no distinction regarding the degree of creativity, since this too is a value judgment extremely variable in nature. The action of the child inventing a new game with his playmates; Einstein formulating a theory of relativity; the housewife devising a new sauce for the meat; a young author writing his first novel; all of these are, in terms of our definition, creative, and there is no attempt to set them in some order of more or less creative.

THE MOTIVATION FOR CREATIVITY

The mainspring of creativity appears to be the same tendency which we discover so deeply as the curative force in psychotherapy—man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities. 

By this I mean the directional trend which is evident in all organic and human life — the urge to expand, extend, develop, mature — the tendency to express and activate all the capacities of the organism, or the self. This tendency may become deeply buried under layer after layer of encrusted psychological defenses; it may be hidden behind elaborate façades which deny its existence; it is my belief however, based on my experience, that it exists in every individual, and awaits only the proper conditions to be released and expressed. It is this tendency which is the primary motivation for creativity as the organism forms new relationships to the environment in its endeavor most fully to be itself.

THE INNER CONDITIONS OF CONSTRUCTIVE CREATIVITY

What are the conditions within the individual which are most closely associated with a potentially constructive creative act? I see these as possibilities.

A. Openness to experience: Extensionality. This is the opposite of psychological defensiveness, when to protect the organization of the self, certain experiences are prevented from coming into awareness except in distorted fashion. In a person who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system, without being distorted by any process of defensiveness. Whether the stimulus originates in the environment, in the impact of form, color, or sound on the sensory nerves, or whether it originates in the viscera, or as a memory trace in the central nervous system, it is available to awareness. This means that instead of perceiving in predetermined categories ("trees are green," "college education is good," "modern art is silly") the individual is aware of this existential moment as it is, thus being alive to many experiences which fall outside the usual categories (this tree is lavender; this college education is damaging; this modern sculpture has a powerful effect on me).

This last suggests another way of describing openness to experience. It means lack of rigidity and permeability of boundaries in concepts, beliefs, perceptions, and hypotheses. It means a tolerance for ambiguity where ambiguity exists. It means the ability to receive much conflicting information without forcing closure upon the situation. It means what the general semanticist calls the "extensional orientation." 

This complete openness of awareness to what exists at this moment is, I believe, an important condition of constructive creativity. In an equally intense but more narrowly limited fashion it is no doubt present in all creativity. The deeply maladjusted artist who cannot recognize or be aware of the sources of unhappiness in himself, may nevertheless be sharply and sensitively aware of form and color in his experience. The tyrant (whether on a petty or grand scale) who cannot face the weaknesses in himself may nevertheless be completely alive to and aware of the chinks in the psychological armor of those with whom he deals. Because there is the openness to one phase of experience, creativity is possible; because the openness is only to one phase of experience, the product of this creativity may be potentially destructive of social values. The more the individual has available to himself a sensitive awareness of all phases of his experience, the more sure we can be that his creativity will be personally and socially constructive.

B. An internal locus of evaluation. Perhaps the most fundamental condition of creativity is that the source or locus of evaluative judgment is internal. The value of his product is, for the creative person, established not by the praise or criticism of others, but by himself.

Have I created something satisfying to me? Does it express a part of me — my feeling or my thought, my pain or my ecstasy? These are the only questions which really matter to the creative person, or to any person when he is being creative.

This does not mean that he is oblivious to, or unwilling to be aware of, the judgments of others. It is simply that the basis of evaluation lies within himself, in his own organismic reaction to and appraisal of his product. If to the person it has the "feel" of being "me in action," of being an actualization of potentialities in himself which heretofore have not existed and are now emerging into existence, then it is satisfying and creative, and no outside evaluation can change that fundamental fact.

C. The ability to toy with elements and concepts. Though this is probably less important than A or B, it seems to be a condition of creativity. Associated with the openness and lack of rigidity described under A is the ability to play spontaneously with ideas, colors, shapes, relationships — to juggle elements into impossible juxtapositions, to shape wild hypotheses, to make the given problematic, to express the ridiculous, to translate from one form to another, to transform into improbable equivalents. It is from this spontaneous toying and exploration that there arises the hunch, the creative seeing of life in a new and significant way. It is as though out of the wasteful spawning of thousands of possibilities there emerges one or two evolutionary forms with the qualities which give them a more permanent value.

Though this is as far as we can go in describing any aspect of the creative act, there are certain of its concomitants in the individual which may be mentioned. The first is what we may call the Eureka feeling — "This is it!" "I have discovered!" "This is what I wanted to express!"

Another concomitant is the anxiety of separateness. I do not believe that many significantly creative products are formed without the feeling, "I am alone. No one has ever done just this before, I have ventured into territory where no one has been. Perhaps I am foolish, or wrong, or lost, or abnormal."

Still another experience which usually accompanies creativity is the desire to communicate. It is doubtful whether a human being can create, without wishing to share his creation. It is the only way he can assuage the anxiety of separateness and assure himself that he belongs to the group. He may confide his theories only to his private diary. He may put his discoveries in some cryptic code. He may conceal his poems in a locked drawer. He may put away his paintings in a closet. Yet he desires to communicate with a group which will understand him, even if he must imagine such a group. He does not create in order to communicate, but once having created he desires to share this new aspect of himself-in-relation-to-his-environment with others.     350-356