The Courage to be Creative

Do you dare to follow your creative urges? Something stopping you? OK, I'll go first...

Hey folks, a quick precede: I wrote this story for Medium (Medium members can read it here) because it’s about creativity in the broad sense. But it’s also largely about writing, and taking the plunge—letting your creative urges out no matter what you might think is good or right, and then putting it out there no matter what you fear people might think or say. OK, the story, including the first 20% or so for those of you who aren’t paid subscribers, because I always want you to glean a takeaway or two:

---

“Creativity takes courage,” the French artist Henri Matisse once said. I assume he meant the courage not only to give something a try — he was a painter, draftsman and sculptor — but to fail miserably, and even to hang your embarrassing work on the wall or — ack! — put it out there for the world to deride.

So here goes.

When it comes to drawing and painting, I’ve long thought I’m a pretty good writer. So I stopped drawing and painting decades ago and put my creative energy full-time into writing and, honestly, got a little too wrapped up in managing and other corporate stuff.

But the urge to paint never died, and with a little more time on my hands lately, I’ve taken it up again. Specifically, I’m painting abstracts, which I’ve never done before, and which is far more daunting than I imagined, and which has tapped into a creative streak I’d long suppressed. The process of creating each painting is at once humbling and instructive, and always immensely satisfying. I wish I’d begun years ago.

So I’m here to tell you that if you have a creative passion burning inside you, now is the time to pursue it. Science says so, too. Whether you wish to write, paint, sculpt, craft finger puppets or pursue any other creative endeavor, pursuing a passion is among the best ways to find your sense of purpose, which studies show is a key to better health and happiness.

OK, really, here goes…

I don’t claim this painting to be great or even good by any objective standard. And that doesn’t matter. I’m painting again, and the joy was in creating it — extracting an idea from my soul and putting it on canvas, seeking to satisfy only my own creative urges. Title: Butterfly Effect, 40x30, acrylic on canvas.

If you’re still with me, then I deem you brave and courageous. And now I’ll get back to using my words. Here are some things painting has taught me about creativity.

The joy is in the doing

After several weeks of painting while continuing to write (I can’t not write) I’m struck by the parallels in the creative process across two totally different art forms. A painting, like a story, starts as a seed of an idea, emerges, evolves, sometimes gets radically redone, and eventually ends up as the thing I envisioned. Or not. With writing, I often realize the vision… or some vision. Stories sometimes end up wildly different than I initially imagine. With painting, well, as you can see, I’m very much a work in progress. Sometimes I have those happy little accidents that Bob Ross taught us to embrace. Sometimes I crank out total crap.

And that’s perfectly OK.

In fact, my frequent dissatisfaction with my finished paintings has reminded me why we humans yearn to create yet are so often inhibited by the inner struggle between the creative soul and the practical mind.

It takes a lot of courage to break from expected cultural norms, do something often deemed frivolous and perhaps even selfish, to trust that you do have a creative bone in your body, then to tap into your soul and let that inner fire light your work, and then, if you’re really really brave—or perhaps indifferent to criticism—put it out there for the world to see.

Mostly, though, I’m reminded why we all must tap into and cultivate those creative urges:

The joy of creativity is in the doing.

Whether I create a painting I’m happy with or one I obliterate with Gesso so I can reuse the canvas, whether I’m proud to show it to my wife or stupid enough to hang it out publicly, the joy is in the creative process.

Don’t doubt your creative instincts