What is the Nature of Your Creativity?

Knowing and Flowing with the Authentic YOU!

By Chris Dunmire, www.creativeslush.com

Why do you think it's important to understand your own personal creative nature? How about for the simple reason that knowing yourself and embracing your strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, aptitudes, gifts, and talents is the foundation of a satisfying and fulfilling creative life.

Let me illustrate. In this chapter of my life, I'm a graphic artist and cartoony illustrator, but do not consider myself to be a "fine artist", skilled at representational drawing, painting, or any other traditional pencil-to-paper type of art.

This has no bearing whatsoever on my ability to be creative or express my creativity through artistic means, however, it's just that I'm not practiced enough to be satisfied with my level of fine artistry skill. I'm a fine art dabbler on occasion, which may very well turn into a fine art DOer with a significant level of passion attached to it. I'm not there yet, and that's OK. Maybe I'll never be there either out of lack of interest or aptitude. And that's OK too.

Most of my visual art is produced in a graphic artist, illustrative kind of way. I'm quite capable of producing eye-catching graphics, layouts and abstract, collage, and cartoony art, but ask me to accurately render that bowl of fruit in chalk pastels in that still life over there and you're going to get smiling fruit with googly eyes jumping hop-scotch squares instead. That's that playful, humorist nature of me that gets expressed through my creativity — and life — every day.

Though I've wrestled with my lack of representational knack for years, I'm accepting more each day that I'm drawn to expressing myself in large concepts with a twist of humor instead of in serious fine details. For some reason, standing in front of a tree with canvas and paintbrush and reproducing said tree in its splendid exactness doesn't satisfy my continual creative quest and appetite for filtering life through my own sense of what's important to me. Why create what's already there? And yet, I'm extremely grateful to those who love and choose to do that, because that skill is needed in our world.

Because we are dynamic and ever-evolving beings, I believe it's important to regularly assess where we are with our individual passions and skill sets so that we are always spending our creative energy wisely and effectively on projects that bring us the most joy and satisfying results. Notice I didn't say "do what other people think we should do." It's not up to them to influence the direction of our creative life and decide how we should be. It is our own journey to awaken and unfold to our own preferences and attractions in this life and we honor ourselves by putting our own inclinations first.

I used to get frustrated over my lack of fine artistry skill until I learned that it's okay to relax and embrace what really is me at this time. This has been an ongoing process that I still nurture each day and will continue to affirm for as long as I need to. Understanding the value of both sides of the coin, I still intend to enter challenging creative territory every so often for the purpose of stretching myself, learning, growing, and seeing what I'm capable of. In fact, every time I visit an art gallery, I am inspired beyond words to pull out my paints and allow the muses, gods, or subconscious flow to express itself through me. Intuitively I know that those hands-on, raw material, artistic mediums are just prime for primitive payback.

So how about it? Are you ready to begin 'knowing and flowing' with the authentic creative being that is you? What are your creative strengths and gifts? And if you are a teacher, how can you apply these new insights to working with your students? •

About the Author | More Articles
Chris Dunmire is the CEO of Creative Slush Playbooks and the driving force behind multiple creativity-inspiring articles, projects, and features for the Creativity Portal Web site. She's trained as a creativity coach with Eric Maisel, Ph.D., and teaches creativity and art-related workshops using her playbooks (not workbooks!) to inspire people of all ages to explore and express their individual creativity.