Only Human

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Artists Sketching in the White Mountains 1868 (PD US) Winslow Homer

Last night, as I began teaching another painting workshop, I wondered again what motivates people to put up hard earned cash and move their bodies across town (sometimes across the country) to take a painting workshop. For the most part, these are not aspiring professionals wanting to hone their skills, but folks with careers in other lines of work. I used to think that painting was just a hobby for them and a group class was a safe bet for some entertainment and relaxation. But now I’m not so sure. I have given it some thought and I believe that there is a deeper, more fundamental motivation that drives us to want to learn to paint.

We have written before about creativity and the new scientific studies investigating the human impulse to create. It is a fascinating subject precisely because it isn’t well understood, and because in some ways artistic creativity has no practical advantage (that we can see) for our…