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Long before there was the internet or YouTube to look up how to make cream puffs, you used a cookbook or called a friend. Years ago while I was living in Alaska, a friend who was interested in making a fancy dessert for her dinner party called her sister in Georgia - long distance. Not at home, she left a message for her on her answering machine with a request for the recipe for cream puffs. Her sister called back and left the following message for the recipe on my friend’s answering machine… “ ½ cup butter, 1 cup water, ¼ teaspoon salt, 1 cup flour and 4 eggs, mix and drop onto cookie sheet. Bake at 425 degrees for 25 minutes.” She had timed her puffs to come out 20 minutes before her guests’ arrival. She mixed the ingredients, and followed her sister’s instructions. She called me in desperation, “They are as hard as hockey pucks!” I asked what the recipe called for – Angrily she defended, “I added all the ingredients just like she said and I didn’t leave anything out.”
This is the day I learned about the empathy of cream puffs … and the creative process. To make cream puffs there is a process. What was left out of the instructions for my friend was that the cup of water and butter were to be “boiling” before adding the flour and salt. As well as each egg was to be added individually into the flour mixture, beating thoroughly before adding each one. There is a process in making cream puffs. Leave out this important part of the process, and there is something entirely different than what was expected. This is the same for creativity. You see, a creative process takes
Just like the cream puffs, when you throw it all together with no awareness to the process, it might end up as disaster. This is why most people do not enter the world of creativity. And those that venture out in to it, often quit working on the projects they once loved. “It’s just too hard,” and “it’s not worth it.” The Creative Process takes time. Something we humans become so frustrated by…and become more inventive to strategies that reduce time like developing paints that dry faster. For materials and skills, some do not want to waste their money to explore. Admittedly they never want to fail. They limit the creative process through an unwillingness to look at old beliefs or myths about creativity. Everyone is creative. You do not have to have the genes… that’s a myth. All humans come equipped with creativity. Creativity is a master strategy for problem solving. Creativity is like a muscle, when you don’t use it, it atrophies. You want to keep it exercised, used on a daily basis as Julia Cameron, the author of Artist Within, says that “creativity is the blood of the soul.” And last, the creative process is non-linear. A to B does not mean that C will happen. For example, I wanted to make a fabric piece using part of Gustav Klimt “Adam and Eve.” This creative process took me over three years to complete. I would get frustrated with the process, not knowing how something would work, and put it aside only to pull it out when I had an idea I would try. During this time, I went to many museums, hearing docents repeat their messages of “don’t touch!” Eureka! What became central to this fabric piece was that I wanted people to touch it. The descendants of Adam and Eve became part of my creation by adding their DNA as they touched the beaded fabrics. As for my friend that day, I brought over a cherry pie and helped her get ready for her dinner party. I listened and laughed with her sharing her frustration of wanting to make something special and not having all of the information she needed. We all need to hold empathy for our own creative process. There will be times when we believe we don’t have enough time or the right materials and become so frustrated with the limited skills we have for our creations. Or get stuck on the belief that “it” must be perfect to be in a show. What creativity is… in the idea world, seldom looks like I want it to in the real world. Holding on to ambiguity allows me not to give up when what I expected to happen does not happen the way I thought it should. It happens they way it happens. For your creativity, keep your focus on the process - the recipe, not the product - cream puffs.
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November 10th of 2010, 440 passengers boarded Qantus flight 32 in Singapore headed to Sydney. Twenty minutes into the flight, one of the plane’s four engines exploded. Immediately multiple alarms went off in the cockpit of the airbus 380, one of the largest and most sophisticated flying machines ever manufactured. Pilots would solve one problem, only to have five new ones; each with its own alarm, arise one after the other. Miraculously, the pilots were able to return and safely land. What saved flight 32 from disaster was the pilots’ willingness to reframe their thinking, remaining focused when overwhelmed with all the plane’s alarms distracting their attention …all while in a nose dive.
These highly trained pilots knew if they continued to focus on what alarm was going off next, they would become so distracted they would crash. The captain, with his hands covering his face, asked his copilot, “what if this was not a 380, but a Cessna? We would not have all these alarms. Let’s fly this plane as though it was a Cessna.” And they did. They focused their attention on landing the plane, rather than focusing their attention on not crashing. So what does this story have to do with artists or creative people? While we are not in the same dire consequences as a plane in a nose dive, our metaphorical nose dive is our creative resistance. What is that you ask? You might be familiar with creative resistance – that is the time we spend putting off working on our painting, sculpture, or writing because we might be overwhelmed in knowing how to complete a project. Or we are fearful our creation will be criticized by others. We are focused on the alarms going off… that is the fear that our painting will not looking as we want it to, or our sculpture not be as perfect as it could be. When we focus our attention on the alarms, we limit our creative potential. We do not finish what we start. We crash. Resistance is the opposite of creativity. Creativity is energy - constantly moving. Resistance is suspended energy - stagnant, not moving. Resistance is a safety mechanism designed to ensure survival. Its purpose allows us to make sense of our issue and work through the details or obstacles before we spend the energy. When resistance blocks creativity, it is not ensuring survival, but like the airplane alarm, distracting us from what is really needed. There are many forms of creative resistance – we will focus on three of the big ones: Procrastination, Criticism and Self-doubt. Each of these serves as an alarm, calling our attention away from the creative process. The alarm of Procrastination is easy to spot. For example: when you set a time to create and find yourself cleaning out the cat box – you can be sure the alarm of procrastination is ringing. The Criticism alarm has different tones – the tone of others’ criticism and the tone of you criticizing another. Often well meaning others will volunteer what they see as weaknesses, flaws, or errors in your creative project without a request for assistance. (Like a friend who reminds you that you might have overcommitted to your art project.) This alarm can make us want to abandon not only the project, but the entire creative endeavor. And how easy it is to focus on another person’s creative flaws rather than to do our own work! The Self-doubt alarm is even more shrill, but is often so continuous we don’t even recognize it is blaring. “I’m not good enough.” “I’ll never be able to make realistic shadows.” “I shouldn’t even try” are common ones. What are some of the alarms that go off for you? You may have to pay close attention because you have heard them so often. The antidote to the alarms of creative resistance is focus. Focus on landing the project. Keep focusing on what you want to accomplish. The alarms will still go off. You do not have to pay attention to them. I grew up thinking that being an artist meant you had to know how to draw. My 6th grade art teacher instructed me to erase the drawing of my thumb because it did not look like a thumb. She said in front of the whole class, “You’re not a Picasso, it’s ok sweetie, you don’t have the talent to draw.” Frustrated and embarrassed, I gave up wanting to be an artist. Secretively I wanted to know how to draw, paint, and create master pieces like my grandmother Bertha Berry did at 68 years old. After my grandfather passed away in 1972, she took up oil painting, creating one master piece after another!
I spent one of the hottest summers in Waco, Texas with my grandmother. She placed a sauce pan, several spoons, and rolling pin on the kitchen table with a stack of drawing paper and some charcoal pencils. With her load of wet laundry in her arms, she commanded, “draw what you see,” and then disappeared down the back steps to hang the clothes on the line. By the time she returned, I was in tears, unable to pick up a pencil, so fearful that I would not be able to draw anything that resembled the pile of objects she dumped on the table. AND confirm my 6th grade teacher WAS right - I really didn’t have the talent or genes to draw what I saw. But the love of my grandmother came through that day giving me a principle that serves my life, “honey, you can do anything, someone just has to show you how first.” With that, my grandmother showed me how to draw, not only the positive space but the negative spaces too. On that day in 1983, I became an artist. Or so I thought. Over the years, I became more and more frustrated living with this artist label. I took classes, LOTS of classes, learning from many different instructors and learning many different techniques. In January of 2002, while in Paris for a psychotherapy conference, my husband and I visited the Musee d’Orsay, the Rodin, the Louvre, AND the Picasso Museum … ALL in one day! Being in the presence of so much art, I hardly noticed my husband’s suffering from “Art Burn.” I sat watching with amazement, a French preschool teacher instructing a dozen or so little children on the concepts of Picasso, helping the children see the faces. Then one child said something and everyone laughed... he declared in French, “Picasso is a Kid.” As I walked through the museum, an Ah-ha moment happened as I viewed the “The She Goat.” I recognized that Picasso used play and recycled materials he gathered from the dump exploring shapes, size, structure, and so could I. On that day, my creative muscles emerged like the Hulk. There are two phases of creativity. First, there is the Bertha Berry method where you gain entry into the art world - you can do anything, but someone just has to show you how first. This is where you learn the techniques; where you build the self confidence. From the moment Picasso was born, his early years of life were immersed in the art world absorbing the basic art forms and theories until he perfected the realistic model. And then instead of saying, "Yes I just want to paint photographs for the rest of my life," something else happened to him. The second phase of his creativity emerged which said, "I want to go beyond that." He was exposed to many different techniques, yet primarily it was his inner voice. Picasso couldn't get to that inner voice without first learning the structure. Bertha WAS right; there are some things you have to be taught. But this goes beyond Bertha's instruction. There are some things that CANNOT be taught. You cannot teach someone to be creative. Creativity is discovered. Creativity is something that THEY MUST discover on their own. Something that I discovered hearing the child understand Picasso from a child’s perspective. Creativity is learning AND discovering. We can teach art. We can't teach creativity. Yet we can teach people how to get out of the way of their creativity to let it be discovered just as Picasso did, allowing his creativity to flow while walking through the dump. So my 6th grade teacher was right … I’m not Picasso. I’m ME! |
AuthorKelly Penrod is ...a peasant of equanimity, harvester of happiness, sower of mindflowers, cultivator of illumination ..and a creative explorer. Archives
August 2023
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