Courageously Creative

Be more creative in your own way

Andy Warhol’s Very Questionable Taste

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Imagining Outside the Box of Soup

Imagining Outside the Box of Soup

“Follow your passion” is good advice for anyone and so is: “do what you love to do” and results will follow.

Andy Warhol tasted, smelled, spilled, and painted what he loved, and what he loved was canned soup. “Warhol said that he painted it, not because it was a modern icon of capitalism, but because it reminded him of his past – as a child he had eaten soup every day.” So he got to knew his subject in the most intimate detail, but he was clearly no foodie.

Like many people, I used to believe there were things I didn’t like such as: Thai food, wine, green beans, spinach, or soup. What I didn’t realize is that I just didn’t like bad Thai food, bad wine and green beans, spinach or soup from a can.

So many of us have been raised on canned soup and without singling out any brand, none compares to what can be freshly made – and it’s so easy. Making soup is as difficult as boiling water and throwing vegetables, plus it can be made by the gallon and frozen into individual portions. Ask any soul to compare canned chicken noodle to homemade chicken soup. Other favorites such as Hungarian goulash, the dreaded mushrooms with wild rice and turkey, gazpacho, acorn squash/yams and my newest hot&sour (with secret ingredient Chinkiang vinegar) are so basic, you can find good recipes with Google.

The point is if you keep an open mind keep, reassess past assumptions and reframe the question, you may find that soup can be a meal. Are you sure you don’t like onions? Are you sure you can’t draw? Don’t like classical music? The challenge is to think outside the metal can and try again. With a more adventurous palate what would Warhol have created?

Catching Ideas in Buckets

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晴耕雨読 seiko udoku : Farm when it's sunny, read when it rains.

晴耕雨読 seiko udoku : Farm when it's sunny, read when it rains.

Sometimes the tides deposit millions of beautiful seashells on the beach and sometimes they wash up only a few broken shards. Have you found that generating ideas is also unpredictable and seems to ebb and flow?

Have you been hungry and wandered around having a difficult time searching for a suitable restaurant and after finding one and eating, you notice on the way home, three more good possibilities. Have you felt indecision when being helped by a pushy salesperson until you say: ”I’m not going to make a decision today.” Then with the pressure turned off, your blood pressure drops, your head clears, and you feel confident to make a purchase.

Sometimes pressure creates necessity, sometimes it creates diamonds, but often it causes anxiety. Are you more creative under pressure with deadlines looming or when relaxed? Not sure what to paint or write? Not sure how to solve a problem? or what to do on a rainy Sunday? When you finally get an idea, the pressure is off, you relax and your mind generates a thunderstorm of new ideas. Too many to use – so catch them in buckets! And write them down for next time. Even if you don’t use them, they can kindle new thoughts.

There is certainly a lot of pressure to develop solutions in Japan today. The kind of pressure most of us would be fortunate to never have to face. To solve the problems – wishing the Japanese buckets of useful ideas!

Jet-Fresh Ideas

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jetfresh

Not exactly a jet

Have you ever been in some far flung places and noticed food being labeled as “Jet-Fresh?” If you search for a formal definition at dictionary.com you get: “No results found for Jet-fresh,” and it’s politely suggested: “Did you mean Catfish?”

Relying on experience, Jet-Fresh seems to mean produce or flowers that are freshly picked, immediately packed on ice, and rushed by limousine to the airport where the “catfish” are flown by private plane to you, all in a carbon neutral manner.

I would like to coin a new definition for Jet-fresh to mean: “A brand new idea – borrowed from a place far away.” New ideas are everywhere and so many of our ideas come through travel.  We don’t even have to go too far to hear different points of view and see different ways of doing things. Online, it’s as easy to read a foreign newspaper or twitter posts that originated in other parts of the world than it is to read what is local. Not only is food fusing but ideas are too and some of the good ones are Jet-Fresh.

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones,” said composer and philosopher John Cage.  Some old ideas, like catfish shipped on a slow boat, can be frightening. What was the latest idea you came across that was Jet-Fresh?

Creative Inferno

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Spring cleaning

Spring cleaning

The Penguin, the Joker, and the Riddler use their creativity to wreak havoc on Gotham City, while Batman and Robin used their own creative powers to prevent mayhem. Is there a Ying and Yang to creativity?

It’s exciting to throw another log into the fire, but how do you feel about burning something you created? Even failed attempts have some value as lessons learned, or to help spur new ideas? It takes effort to physically clean out the attic and how many poor examples do we keep?

Pablo Picasso said “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” In our creative process, do we have to burn to make room for something new? Children rotate the wheels on their Echer Sketch to erase their drawings, just as they topple their towers of blocks, dismantle their jigsaw puzzles, and continuously remold their play-doh.  For us, if the vase flies off the potter’s wheel it’s clearly mud, but most of the time, it’s more difficult to decide when to destroy what we have created. “To build may have to be slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day,” describes Winston Churchill.

After artists becomes famous, every scrap they leave behind gets served as a gourmet meal. Famous or not, who wants their legacy to be a stew of leftovers?

Choosing paintings to frame and hang on our walls is admitting them into our daily consciousness – more difficult is taking them out. Removing them is something I call “deframing” since it’s both defaming and deleting. How do you choose what to frame, what to haul to the attic? Or what to toss on the coals? 

Drawn to Draw: Turn Seeing Into Something More Fascinating

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Drawn to the Sun

Drawn to the Sun

Have you ever watched a seabird appear to change colors from white to aqua as it dives toward the ocean or turn to gold at sunset?  Of course the bird doesn’t change but the reflected light does. One way to appreciate life more fully is by learning “how” to look, since beauty and interesting effects of light are all around.

Most of us think “drawing is hard” and are never taught or motivated enough to move beyond stick figures. Many people don’t know that drawing is not an inborn ability but a skill that anyone can learn in a short time with a little practice. The simple exercises in Drawing on The Right Side of The Brain can give anyone enough skill with a pencil to increase his or her appreciation of the world.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand,” taught the philosopher Xun Zi. 不闻不若闻之，闻之不若见之，见之不若知之，知之不若行之；学至于行之而止矣。

“Do to understand” is where drawing comes in – Drawing is just applied seeing. Try sketching a person’s face to reveal and observe features and expressions in ways you’ve never seen before. Try sketching a landscape to see details of the ground that are hidden from most people and really get to see the subtleties of clouds for the first time. Try to draw the view from your window at different times of day, or in various weather conditions.

Even if your drawing isn’t very good, you will begin to notice things differently.  These activities open the shades to a window that lets you see the world as an artist. With new appreciation for nuances  your seeing will be transformed into something more fascinating.

Survival of the Fittest?

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Yellow Orchid

Not in my backyard

There is an ancient vine growing on a trellis in my backyard. Each spring, some runners reach up for the stream of water that runs along the gutter and each summer, I prune the vines off the roof. It occurred to me that for the sake of order, I was cutting the longest, strongest, and most adaptive stems, and although the plant survives, I’m discouraging the plants full potential and may be missing the best flowers.

Forbes asks: Are people too smart to be creative?
Companies can’t have too many captains and can’t have too many stray vines. Employees are encouraged to keep the status quo and stay aligned with company goals. How do you remain professional without sacrificing creativity? Understanding the mission, adhering to culture, dress, using proper language, grammar, being on time, and keeping to schedules all help your ideas to be accepted without sacrificing your creativity. Bounce ideas off trusted friends before making them public. Look for the formal or informal paths for innovation that allow for review and selection of new ideas worth implementing.

Understanding culture and paths for innovation allows you to climb the trellis and flower without being clipped. How do you create within an organization?