When do ideas happen?

Maybe the drinking research is new, but I have certainly heard all the other ways explaining when we get ideas. Usually, ideas come to us in a relaxed state. BUT Robert, you have unfortunately left out one crucial piece of information. Perhaps the research you read did not properly explain a crucial stage. It’s the searching/extending effort stage. It is likely that we have seen an Olympic athlete score a perfect ten. Her performance may seem guided by angels, but if we dig into the process of learning, we know this is far from the truth. If you don’t put in the long hours of struggle, learning, improving, stumbling, working through confusion… the craft will not come and so it is for ideas as well. All the great inventors have commented about a stage of trial and error. Their minds are busy trying to make a connection of one idea to another. They may be searching for one factor or idea that bridges two unrelated ideas together. They know their science and all the technical details and sort through the information looking for a hit. The wheels of their brain are spinning and continue to spin even when they stop to rest. It’s as if they did all the mixing of ingredients to make a cake, stuck it in the oven and all that is needed is to trust the process and wait. After the decision to find an idea, search, look around, gather thoughts, there is a “fermentation” process that looks like relaxation, taking walks, eliminating stress, taking a bath…then the idea hits us. Even if we come up with an idea instantly without the effort I mentioned, you can be sure that the idea was probably stewing for days, months, or even years before. You just weren’t aware of it. “Great stuff is ready to grab out there, floating in the ether. ” Nope, nope, nope – It comes to us in a relaxed state after we extend effort. (Yep, no way of avoiding work.) Perhaps we forget about the effort put into an idea because we are unaware of the process or it came slowly over time. Maybe we made a connection through being inspired by someone else’s art. Or we even swiped the idea from another artist. (OK, but the idea better be in alignment with your vision that you’ve been stewing about, or else you’re going nowhere in the long run.There is a difference between a copycat/parrot and someone who snatches up and idea and take ownership of it in their own way.) A potential flaw in viewing the creative process is to focus only on the feeling of getting the hit when we are relaxed and not appreciate the effort or focus needed (even though, at times, it’s a slow brew instead of a flash of inspiration.) Appreciate the rush of adrenaline when we get that flash of inspiration while taking a walk, but don’t fool yourself that it came down from the ethers. It was likely, stewing in your brain all along and you finally made the connection — or you saw an existing idea and made the connection with your own artwork.

You don’t get to enjoy the easy ride downhill unless you pedal uphill first.

I have found the reason for the marvelous ideas was to get away from chore that was just that a chore. The ideas flood the mind while feeling forced to do those mundane jobs.

After an impoverishing disability, now joyfully mended, I must agree with you that seeing green – particularly on USD bills – can be most inspiring!

What about walking? For me, walking is the thing. Often, when I start out on a two hour walk, I have no particular thoughts, but come home with a fully formed painting or sculpture idea.

I find that working itself generates ideas. As the brush continues to move, my mind slides into a rich display of possibilities. Many of these I reject, but others are stored and I positively vibrate until they have been further thought through or expressed.

You mentioned transition. Driving a car is one of those times. My studio is a short drive from home but that time is valuable to me. A car is a sort of no man’s land, neither there nor here, the actions required are automatic and rote. The mind slips into assembly mode. It’s important for me not to turn on the car radio for this short period.

I’m not sure about being satisfied. I think frustration may be more valuable.

I’m with Yves on this. Driving is a big part of my creative time (amazing how I get home), 35 minutes each way to work. Also, after a workshop, which sometimes feels like a waste of time and money, the learning process may take a month or so while it “cooks” in my mind. Then, it starts to show up in the art.

I second all these. Mild sleep deprivation actually seems to help me as dreamlike thoughts are easy to access (maybe because I abstain from mind-altering substances). Collaboration is also a wonderful tool. “Beautiful corpse” projects, group projects based on a theme, literally working hands-on with other body painters on a single subject can be so … communal. Harmoniously stimulating? But it really requires someone who understands the work and is comfortable with my work style, which is semi-improvisational. I used to think artists were supposed to be miserable and crazy and splendidly isolated. Wrong. I do some of my best work with people around me. I think the chatter helps me focus for some reason (mild adult ADD factors in).

…students who drank enough to raise their blood-alcohol level to 0.075 performed better on tests of insight than sober students It should be pointed out that those students won’t be able to drive home (in BC anyway) as that is above the legal limit. I can’t imagine writing a test after having a few drinks. Wouldn’t work for me.

I was surprised to learn that some men fantasize about young chickens. This was new to me.

We are all grateful of concise precise universal truths that bring to us a light into our own soul & wanderings. I will stop thinking and replace my expectations with a forward step into the “experience”, to a realm where thinking stops and intuition instructs me.

Reading your Newsletter today, has been a big help to me! I recently finished a painting of mine in oils, and now I just don’t know what to paint next. I don’t drink, but I feel like an Alcoholic, in very bad need of a new subject to paint.

….in response to whatever you find titillating, here in the country when my dog, Emily, rolls in particularly old manure (but not the treated stuff in bags), I find myself very filled with vigor and inspiration

Don’t forget the meditative effects of driving. I suppose heavy traffic might not enhance the muse though.

I don’t find to many issues in coming up with ideas, my problem comes when I have to decide which to do first? Do I sketch my daughter or start a painting? Sometimes its the indecision that slows productivity! Lately I have used this limbo space by filling the time with marketing, contacting galleries and research. That way even when I am not creating, I am putting effort towards finding homes for the paintings when they do emerge into reality! As to the green theme, I love “spring green” it is my favorite color all year. Not only a color it is a fresh promise of good things to come. A promise of potential and new beginnings, It fills me with happiness and joy and makes me inspired!

I was particularly struck by your comments about the impact on creativity of the colour Green; that may explain a lot for me personally. You see, I moved to a new home/studio recently in a rural area north of Toronto. Where I previously had vast vistas to gaze out on, now I am surrounded by forests and a small lake. My studio has floor to ceiling windows looking out at the greenery. After almost a year away from my easel, over the past 6 months I have been painting like never before and the results have been consistently good. Growth, rebirth, renewal seems to have taken a firm hold, so I guess I owe it all to the colour green!

“What women need to fantasize, I’m not sure.” Why don’t we ask them? Ladies, please fill the clickbacks with your answers!

Recently I was at the dentist having my teeth cleaned. I wanted the time to go quickly so I began planning paintings that were to be used as examples in an upcoming workshop. Apparently I was so quiet that I worried the dentist. She asked how I was doing multiple times. I got LOTS of ideas.

“Chicks”? Really? Robert you could have made your point in your professional artist’s newsletter without the use of denegrating slang terms for women. I don’t object to you saying it in the pub with your mates whilst out drinking up some ideas, dude, but not in this forum. Please!? ;-)

Women fantasize about the same things as men – there are chicks of both gender.

I teach Adult Painting Lessons out of my studio and always have my students subscribe to your letter because I think your perspective is sensible and approachable and understandable. I am also a Middle and Upper School art teacher at an Independent School in Minnesota and have those students look at your words as well. It is tough to be an artist, because it means you have to figure a lot of it out yourself. There is so much wisdom in your letters, and such great modeling and honesty of how it is to be an artist.

I’m with Mary … surprised to hear that men fantasize about chickens. May I ask why chickens?

I went green today! class assignment was Tuscany. All I could see were the cypress trees. I have a good start on a painting. Think green, red, yellow and some violet. I am still experimenting with color.

Chicks? Somehow, everything else you wrote lost all importance. I find that word offensive in this context and from you. You could have simply said women.

I found that working at pottery would start out okay and get better and better as I continued to work and usually at the end of the day or actually for me , in the middle of the night, the best pieces would be made. The awesome pieces always came in the silence of the night with some quiet music in the backround. I was a handbuilder and always looking for this for texture , all the time. and Ideas always went up on the bullentin board for future use. But for me there was something alway’s given to me in the night. love, love

I’m afraid I too have to agree with those who commented on your choice of wording for male fantasies … in this day and age there are far more neutral terms for phrasing this … calling us “chicks” – or “old hens”, as the case may be – conjures up a negative image in the minds of thinking women everywhere. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. Otherwise your writing makes a lot of sense.

Does the term “hunk” offend men?

That’s right! Hunk!!! No female anywhere has ever sexually derogatorily referred to some male somewhere as an object- right?

It’s been said that thoughts are like wild geese: they’re here for a brief moment, loud and boisterous, then they’re gone. In transitional times, I must act quickly with pencil and paper as they melt into the ether. And chicks were born to give me fever, be it Fahrenheit or Centigrade.

A change of scenery or activity always refreshes. If you’re bogged down and sitting … get up and walk. If you’re in a funk and don’t care to socialize, go somewhere purposely to mix with people. If you’re driving, take a different route to wherever … try a restaurant you’ve never been to before, a store you’ve not been in, and if possible travel. Anything to shake up the norm. Habit is nothing more than habit and it is too easy to wallow in it. As artists we’re guilty of always being on the look for inspiration. But, in the pursuit of refreshment we just might discover that idea.

I enclose an abstract that debunks some of the ideas that have been proposed for where creativity and insight come from but does separate them from the information gathered so far. It is always of great interest to me the process of empirical observation connecting to the science of the body. The brain is still mysterious, but maybe others would like to know what the science says so far. Your list of when Ideas happen is probably better than current science. Thank you so much for the gift you give of keeping artists all over the world connected to each other and sharing what works for them! “Abstract: Creativity is a cornerstone of what makes us human, yet the neural mechanisms underlying creative thinking are poorly understood. A recent surge of interest into the neural underpinnings of creative behavior has produced a banquet of data that is tantalizing but, considered as a whole, deeply self-contradictory. We review the emerging literature and take stock of several long-standing theories and widely held beliefs about creativity. A total of 72 experiments, reported in 63 articles, make up the core of the review. They broadly fall into 3 categories: divergent thinking, artistic creativity, and insight. Electroencephalographic studies of divergent thinking yield highly variegated results. Neuroimaging studies of this paradigm also indicate no reliable changes above and beyond diffuse prefrontal activation. These findings call into question the usefulness of the divergent thinking construct in the search for the neural basis of creativity. A similarly inconclusive picture emerges for studies of artistic performance, except that this paradigm also often yields activation of motor and temporoparietal regions. Neuroelectric and imaging studies of insight are more consistent, reflecting changes in anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal areas. Taken together, creative thinking does not appear to critically depend on any single mental process or brain region, and it is not especially associated with right brains, defocused attention, low arousal, or alpha synchronization, as sometimes hypothesized. To make creativity tractable in the brain, it must be further subdivided into different types that can be meaningfully associated with specific neurocognitive processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)”

I often get ideas while driving. I remember reading that movement stimulates the part of the brain that controls ideas.

I love reading you. I can’t imagine anybody not. Do you ever have discussions w/the long dead? I’m not talking about recent departures. They’re so much more emotional if less opinionated than people who haven’t been around for a long time. Those guys always seem to know what they’re talking about; they’re forceful. Sometimes I ask a long-time-deceased friend or (seldom) relative what they think of where I’ve got to since ‘them’ and how I’ve gotten here. Often they’re pleased w/my progress. But sometimes one or t’other of ’em will respond, “Nice, but you know I’d perish if you inflicted THAT on me.” I know the people I talk to like that very well and so, like Arte Johnson the resulting ideas can be “VERY Interesting.” I argue a lot w/my German Stepfather. He has yet to come up w/any good ideas. He was known to be unimaginative. He and I wrestle while walking. The act is locomotive like the well-greased gears of a glider. Once you get going, it takes a while to glide to a stop. Unlike me, he never stops of his own accord. Sometimes I just give up, hop off while the machine’s still moving and come inside to transcribe the fodder.

Chicks are good because they stimulate the male to show off and my reputation is to be imaginative and chicks like imaginative guys.

Regarding driving, the hum of the car is like a meditative mantra that causes the flow to start especially when driving in pastoral areas where you don’t have to be too alert.

Yves and Barbara and Arnold have mentioned driving. Driving is a right brained activity…that is why we miss the exit! Some left brained intellectuals are the worst drivers…too many decisions to be made in word/thought brain, not being willing to trust the other side of the brain.

I forgot to mention Karen’s interesting thought, too. Sorry!

Hmmm. Chicks. At my age, I would be thrilled to be called a chick. Relax ladies and lighten up. We burned our bras years ago.

Actually driving is not a left brain activity – nor a right brain one. Measuring of the brain activity of experienced drivers showed no brain activity whatsoever. Scary! Somehow our lizard brain can drive just fine without any human participation. Our brain is left to do what it likes the best – daydream!