Call it the "parietal paradox": Patients with a variant of frontotemporal dementia-in which selective involvement of the left anterior temporal lobe has been detected-suddenly exhibit an ability to create startling works of art when no previous talent or even interest had been documented. In other cases, experienced artists go on to produce paintings that are as striking as anything found in their entire body of work. ~ Fred Balzac
Recently on one of the TV news magazines I saw a feature that linked brain damage (stroke) to personality changes that included an unleashing of compulsive creativity. This phenomena sparked my reading and that reading supported the premise of that TV show. It made me wonder. It made me wonder about myself.
I am not a well-known artist. Some people call what I do a hobby. For me, the art (the poetry, the doll making, journaling, blogging, jewelry making, the Paper Mache, the novels, and all that creative stuff I do) is not a hobby. I feel insulted when what I do is called a hobby. While I may lack talent, and I am unsuccessful by most of the measuring sticks on earth, I think of myself as an artist. What I'm wondering about right now is WHY. Why do I create? Why does anyone create? Why is my art so constantly on my mind? I've had no stroke. I'm unaware of any brain damage. It is certainly possible that I have some birth-defective brain that has changed my left anterior temporal lobe, but if so, I don't know anything about that.
I remember once, in a group session with Lili Parish, my shrink/friend, someone in the group implied that my abilities to paint pictures and write poetry were "gifts." The suggestion made was that some people have the gift, and other people didn't. I argued about this train of thought.
What I believe is that if you had drawn as many pictures as I have drawn, you would be at least as good an artist as I am, and you would probably be better. I am not sure how many little cartoons, and serious paintings I have completed, but I would estimate it is in the thousands. I have been drawing since before I started school. Instead of paying attention in class I was drawing on my notebook paper. I draw and write every day, and have missed days with my art only after surgery or when overwhelmed by my daily life [like the days I spent moving to Oklahoma City from Lakeland Florida.] In a similar way, as a kid, I demonstrated zero athletic skill. I couldn't throw a football. I knew guys that could throw like a pro, but that was a "gift" I did not seem to have. Of course those guys good at throwing footballs had been tossing a ball around for years.
The more you do what you do the better you will do what you do. This was my explanation for what abilities I had, as well as the abilities other people have that I don't. I am terrible at playing the Sitar. Does Ravi Shankar have a gift that I have been denied, or was he a gifted Sitar player because he spent his life playing the Sitar while I have never actually seen one in person?
This rationale goes a long way towards explaining talent, at least in my mind. In Renaissance Italy they didn't have a lot of historically great ballplayers, but their culture didn't care that much about a kids throwing ability. In Renaissance Italy they support art. So if a kid was drawing on the wall, and if some passing adult noticed the drawing, and said it looked good [for a kid that age], that kid would be encourage to do more of that activity. The more the kid is encouraged, praised, and urged on, the more they will do what is getting this positive feedback, and eventually they will have an artistic gift. In the 1940's if a little kid threw a rock and it went further than a passing adult thought was normal for a kid that age, they immediately would think, "Baseball!"
Another behaviorist shrink/friend of mine, named James Cail, use to say, "People do what they get paid to do." What he meant by that is that people can be paid with money, or just positive feedback, but if they are getting something out of the activity they will keep doing that activity. Vincent Van Gogh. only sold one painting in his life time, but that does not mean he was not getting paid. There were people in his life that admired, and supported and encouraged his artistic activities.
But maybe, just getting positive feedback, and spending your life doing a particular artistic activity is not all of the answer. The people on that TV show who had strokes started doing art compulsively and they had no life of practicing that art. They just suddenly had to be artists. Their ability can be questioned. Some of the work seemed especially primitive, but then no more primitive than modern art by a hundred other accepted and admired artists.
Could it be that creativity is always linked to some quirk of the brain, or were these stroke victim artists just a aberration, and that artistic talent is normally, and mostly often the result of the ole "practice makes perfect" sort of stuff?
Here is what I think. I want to believe that artistic ability is not a gift. Because that is what I want to believe, I look for quotes and data that supports that view.
Why do I want to believe that artistic ability is not a gift? Because I don't feel gifted. If it is a gift, then it is possible that I didn't get the gift, or that the size of my gift is small. If art is a gift then I am limited by that truth. If artistic ability is developed then there are no limits on what I could accomplish artistically. Not only can I go as far as I choose to go with my art, but this would be equally true for you. Anyone, and everyone could be and do whatever they wanted if they just put their mind to it, work art for it, and sustain their interest, motivation, and practice.
So while there may be little fissures in the brain that can contribute to a creativity compulsion, I still lean to the POV that artistic ability is developed by creating art.
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