Elizabeth Gilbert author of a new book on being creative called Big Magic, just did a Facebook post about the fact that people stop drawing at the point where their artistic abilities were first shamed or ridiculed. I’ve blogged before about how that happened to me in grade eight when a teacher made fun of my art in front of the whole class.
Elizabeth quotes Lynda Barry who says when people who have been “non-artists” for a long time start drawing again, their images will look like they were made by a child the same age as the person was when they stopped drawing. That means we can pick up where we left off and start moving forward in our process of learning and growing creatively.
In her Facebook posts about her new book Elizabeth has been encouraging people to embrace their creativity and try dancing, or writing or singing or drawing even if they haven’t done it for decades. She encourages us to stop denying our creative inheritance as human beings and not be scared or embarrassed about nurturing our creative instincts.
With the help of my friend Esther I’ve been trying to do that over the last year. She gave me the courage to take a drawing class and since then she and I have been getting together every month to sketch. I’ve illustrated this post with the results of our October drawing outing at the Mayberry Gallery where I tried to re-create a portion of the work of Bill Brownridge. With Esther’s help I’m going back to my younger art self and have started drawing again. By showing my work here I am trying to get over the embarrassment of my 13-year-old self and celebrate the chance to be creative in a way I thought was closed to me.
Other posts…..
This certainly hit home as a similar thing happened to me when a painting was ‘laughed at’ by someone close to me. Since then I have not painted anything ‘real’ except streaks or dots of color with my kids.