THE ARTIST WITHIN

Like a hidden seed which springs if nourished and watered, certain hidden abilities hide inside each of us. Blooming of creativity is a feast in our life, available for each of us.

In our childhood insensitive adults or children often criticized or ruined our masterpieces, they often stopped us to be creative. An interesting experiment was conducted in Moscow. Drawings of children from their age of six and eleven were compared. On the drawings from elder ages the creativity of the age of six was replaced by stiff inflexibility and low-keyness. What childhood influences had affected the children on the area of art?

Children yet do not fear always from making mistakes, but adults do, and adults teach their children this fear. As adults, we parents and teachers can change our personal programs on this area, and we can hand over self-confident approaches and techniques to our children. Those teachers and parents are able to do this, who are not blocked in blossoming out their own art.

When I was a child, I enjoyed drawing, but as years passed by, this talent in me grew dim. In 1993 I took part in a drawing course for adults which based on the book of Betty Edwards „How to Draw on the Right Side of the Brain”. In the course the exercises helped us to change the way how to view and perceive pictures.

For example, instead of watching and drawing an object we focused on the spaces around it or we copied a portrait divided into squares one square after the other, even also upside down. All the time we concentrated, we were watchful and conscious, still relaxed and free. These empowering experiences helped us to change our brain mentally.

I did not become a professional artist even after the course, but I know, I could, if I’d choose it. The most important thing what happened to me is I’ve realized I have such great abilities on all areas of life if I get rid of blocking factors and I learn in the appropriate way.

In the 1950s Dr. Roger W. Sperry and his students in California Technology Institute conducted several researches on functioning of the right and the left side of the brain. They found that the most compound mental functions were divided among the two sides of the brain. For example, the left side governs analytical thinking, logic, keeps an eye on the details, recognises the sequence of letters and numbers (this is the base of verbal abilities). The right side is responsible for creativity and feelings. Analyses space, geometrical forms, figures. This side overviews the total and puts details together. This side is the homeland of dreams, here will be created new combinations of ideas.

Traditional education demands generally to follow the sequences and the patterns and neglects the rights side of the brain. The intellectual approach is based on learning separate parts, not seeing the whole picture as for example in the Montessori school of pedagogy. We learn academic knowledge in a verbal way, depressing the creative areas of our brains. Is it possible that we have become a world of the left side of the brain, where our creative, emotional, instinctive being is not cultivated?

As Dr. Sperry summarizes: „The most important we have found is it seems there are two ways of thinking, verbal and non-verbal, which are quite characteristically separated from each other in the right and the left side of the brain. Our educational system, like science in general, tends to neglect the existence of the non-verbal intellect. All this reflect that modern societies discriminate the right side way of thinking.”

Anyone can become an „artist” within four days, until now everyone could manage it without exception, who was ready to experience the wonderful feeling of „everything is possible”. Creativity is an appraisal of our own splendidness. Create and strengthen in ourselves these abilities by exploring the artist within us.