The Artist's Road Painting the World's Beautiful Places

Dream a Little Dream

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Julie Daydreaming     1894     Berthe Morisot

   “Creativity is, put simply, the ability to imagine and come up with original ideas and solutions. It’s a willingness to leave what is known, what exists, and open up to what’s possible.”
                    Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross -
                    Your Brain on Art - How the Arts Transform Us.

   As a child, I remember getting into trouble often in elementary school for daydreaming. At that time, in a parochial school, daydreamers were sometimes seen as problem children who needed discipline to “straighten them out”. They needed to be taught to pay attention to their academic studies. Acknowledging creativity was definitely not on the agenda. I loved to draw what my dreaming gave me, and sometimes would create illustrated booklets on various topics that I was fascinated with. When I wasn’t out running around exploring the city nearby, I used my drawing to explore the world inside my head. Some of this was encouraged in my home, some not. I didn’t know then just how important this activity would become later in my life. I had no notion of what an artist did or that I was going to pursue art as a vocation. I just enjoyed it. Whatever distracted me then, I am still, today, an inveterate daydreamer, but now I turn those dreams into Art.

   In the dozens of interviews with other professional artists we have conducted for The Artist’s Road, we find that our propensity to actively daydream new worlds is a common one among our artistic peers. Today, there  are a number of researchers seriously trying to figure out where creativity originates in the brain and how those cognitive processes function and interrelate with different areas of the brain. One of the big research questions is, “What makes some people capable of encouraging and using their creativity more than others?” Roger Beaty, director of the Cognitive Neuroscience of Creativity Laboratory at Penn State University is exploring that question and others using a slew of instruments, including neuroimaging devices. They have discovered that creative thinking comes from the interaction of the brain’s default mode (mind wandering) and its executive control networks coupled to the its memory systems. Creative thinking, it is believed, comes from disrupting the executive control network, and allowing the default mode to override it. They found that engaging in the arts is one way to activate this process.

   Having the ready ability to be creative when we choose takes practice, of course, but like most brain exercises, the creative ability gets stronger with intentional use over time. And that, requires regular daydreaming. Now that the scientific community is on board, artists are in the happy position of being able to assert that we have turned our grade school “learning disability” into a valuable professional asset! I’m glad that’s finally settled.