Creative Spirit Blog March 15, 2026 Let Your Creativity Out!

"Liminal Space" Acrylic

”Creativity is as much a part of our tool kit as walking on two legs and having a big brain” Agustin Fuentes

Creativity is one of the most fundamental human qualities. It is the unique and defining trait of our species.

People often stereotype creative people as the province of "artists", but we all have the capacity to imagine, change things, and create new things.  It is the art of combining a known thing with another small idea, and another small idea, until something great appears.  The essence of creativity is to look around, see how it is, and imagine other possibilities. The what if question!

Some of humankind’s most creative achievements were not done by "artists" but have served very utilitarian ends. Perhaps beginning in the stone age. They took a rock and modified it until it became a useful tool.  We are all creative. We take what we know, add, alter, modify, revise, or amend it until we have fashioned something unique. We just need to be open to new possibilities.

We all come from different places.  What motivates one person is not going to be what motivates another.  Some people will be motivated by life events, some by the human condition, some by nature, others by music, literature, movement, or simply the elements of design: line, shape, color, or texture.

I read this past week that Jackson Pollack’s main reason for painting was the activity itself.  The act of pouring paint and moving about. They called it, “The act of concentrated frenzy”.  This is easy to understand because he put many canvases on the floor and walked around them, pouring paint on them.  Creativity manifests itself in many ways. 

The human brain doesn’t passively take in experience like a recorder. It constantly works over our sensory data and this is where our creativity begins to bud. Each person has his own idea of what is beautiful, meaningful, interesting, sad, or funny. Picasso found beauty in a tin can, in a rusted coil spring, in a junkyard, yet Robert Henri desired to revolutionize American art by breaking away from academic traditions to depict raw, honest, scenes of daily life. Andy Warhol took the mundane consumer product and  made it into elevated art.

If we as artists tap into those things which make us feel deeply, and enjoy the process, we will be successful in what we do.  We just have to find what it is that makes us passionate.  When what we are doing becomes an academic exercise, and we find ourselves struggling, it may be time to change and do something new.  When we worry about what we are creating instead of creating, we are wasting our creative energy. 

It may be good to occasionally check in with our “creative soul.”  Assess what we are doing and make sure we are still finding enjoyment in the subject and activities we choose.  Do we still feel exhilarated by them?

I never stop finding things in nature that motivate me. Some give me ideas, some give me great pleasure, and others I take and use in my work.  Most of all I want to have fun and lose myself in the creative process. 

“Let the beauty we love be what we do.”     Rumi