By Dr Bibiana Chan
Everyone has an inner child waiting to roll up the sleeves to splash some colours in one’s life!
Creativity = Curiosity + Courage
I openly shared my own struggles with clinical depression. I attended a weekend art therapy workshop at Sydney University a decade ago. I learnt how creativity could keep me out of misery!
Creativity is simply our ability to combine all the existing pieces in our head—memories, ideas, knowledge, inspiration—into incredible new things. It is completely contingent upon the depth, breadth, and diversity of these cognitive micro-resources—the more pieces we have, and the more disciplines they span, the stronger, richer, more impactful our creative output will be.
The art therapist encouraged participants at the workshop to set up a permanent ‘Creative Corner’ at our home. It certainly works for me. American Artist and Educator Erin Lee Gafill believes that everybody has the capacity to create! She has never seen a boring child’s artwork. She said,
Every child’s artwork is immediate, emotional and funny which is very important in life. There is something about finding the child in yourself. Learning how to play and how to come back to become a child. Colour is important and pattern is playful. Play with those elements in life, don’t be afraid to have a good time. Just get started, just to get hold of a project, give it a time limit, eg. 10 minutes and walk away. Once you get started on something, you come back to it every day.
When I watched her tutorial, I was amazed to find that was exactly what I did to reach the flow state! Cosmic Doddle works for me! I hope it will work for you too.
Follow your intuition! Are you enjoying it? Is this fun? Listening to what you have noticed? How does it feel?
Playing along, mixing the colours. Play is the operating word. The pattern you drew is inviting you to play! Take a piece of wax or candle and draw a wax line. Give yourself a surprise!
The 2nd word is ‘ Allow yourself to surprise yourself!’
Enjoy Erin’s tutorial and give it a go!