How Creativity Can Inform Our Work (aka how my mother influenced what I do)
My mother recently gave an intimate talk on creativity. She has been creating for over seven decades as a painter, gardener, chef, house renovator - really in everything she does. So she has bona fides in the subject area. In all those years, this was the first time she says she has ever publicly talked about her paintings and she revealed that she was a bit anxious talking about the idea of 'creativity.' - How do you describe something that just is. Spoiler alert - she was amazing at it. Two things in particular snuck up on me, and then, with the force of a compass needle finding its place pointing north, revealed the influence my mother's creativity has on my work. First, she spoke of how creativity is about coming into something without 'any rules about a certain product expected [of the work].' Second, she explained how she always started with just observing - seeing what you see without judgement or expectation. (In fact, I can still hear her instructing my ...