Please join me at the OHAG Holiday for the Arts
Gala: Friday, October 18, 5:30 – 9:00 pm
Show & Sale: Saturday, October 19 & Sunday, October 20, 10 am-5 pm
I will be exhibiting three paintings at the show. Eternity, Not One is Lost and Storm Over Wheat Fields
Elaboration: This is the stage where you get into the details of development and test your results; you actually paint the painting, print the t-shirts, build the prototype, or beta test the software. You are moving from visualization of your ideas to implementing them, asking for feedback, and verifying the outcome. Again, remember the creative process is not a linear experience, but iterative as it spirals towards completion.
Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) described the problem facing the artist in the following manner:
“The art of pictorial creation is so complicated . . . it is so astronomical in its possibilities of relation and combination that it would take an act of super-human concentration to explain the final realization.”
A more methodical approach to this stage in the creative process and its challenges can be found in the design field of aerospace engineering. At Georgia Institute of Technology, Professor Daniel P. Schrage’s approach includes, as he describes it, The Four Challenges (C’s) of the Design Environment. They are (1) creativity, (2) complexity, (3) choice, and (4) compromise. Creativity, he believes is an idea of something that has not existed before or has not existed in the designer's mind before. Complexity is that which requires decisions on many variables and parameters; and then choice is making the decision between many possible solutions at all levels, from basic concepts to the smallest detail of shape. Finally, there is compromise made to balance multiple and sometimes conflicting requirements.
While the expression of elaboration is very different for Hofmann and Schrage, I think both would agree with what creativity expert, James Taylor, describes is happening during this stage:
“This is where Edison said that it [genius] is “1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” The elaboration stage is the 99% perspiration stage. This is where you are actually doing the work . . . testing the idea, working on the idea, those late nights in the studio, working at your desk, those hours in the laboratory if you are scientist, those days of testing and micro-testing products. This is the elaboration.”
As I close out this series, I hope you enjoy the creative process and go on to make the world more beautiful; and I encourage you to find the process that works best for you on your journey.
Godspeed.
The evaluation stage of the creative process requires taking time to carefully appraise the significance and value of the proposed project before it has begun, during the process of creation, and after completion. At The Institute of Design at Stanford University, this aspect in the creative process is an integral part of design thinking, as described on its website page, Our Way of Working:
“We welcome our students with a methodology for innovation that combines creative and analytical approaches, and requires collaboration across disciplines. This process—which has been called design thinking—draws on methods from engineering and design, and combines them with ideas from the arts, tools from the social sciences, and insights from the business world. Our students learn this process together, and then personalize it, internalize it, and apply it to their own challenges.”
As James Taylor, MBA, FRSA, also notes:
“It’s the idea of going out to a small group of trusted friends and saying:
‘I’ve had this idea, what do you think about this?’
It is very important part because we only have a limited amount of time to do certain things. Often you find that people who are called the most ‘creative people’ are often very good at this stage, the evaluation stage. They have all these ideas, but they can use self-criticism and reflection to say, ‘These are the ones that have the most merit and that I’m going to work on.‘"
In an era when artists and designers are increasingly concerned with making a transformative impact on their world—beyond the shelves of stores or walls of galleries—collaboration has become a necessary and very effective part of the evaluation stage. At Stanford, they believe that design innovation lies at the crossroads of viable business, technological feasibility, and human values.
I agree.
“I have a terrible clarity of mind at times, when nature is so lovely these days, and then I’m no longer aware of myself and the painting comes to me as if in a dream.” from a letter by Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo, 25 September 1888
The beautifully lyrical writing of Van Gogh brings us to the next stage of the creative process. This is what creativity and innovation consultant, James Taylor, describes as the moment of insight:
“The third stage is what most of the public think is a classic signal or sign of a creative person, what is called the INSIGHT stage . . . it is really the idea of the ‘Aha’ moment, the ‘Eureka’ moment. Although it is probably the smallest part of the five steps, it is possibly one of the most important parts.”
The question then could be: Is there something I can do to experience insight?
For transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau, it required living alone in the woods on the shores of Walden Pond:
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.” from Walden
The moment of insight often comes during periods of solitude, in the early waking hours of the day, or while walking or running; but it can also happen during conversations in neighborhood cafés, and in cities where synergy is produced by artists gathering together to share ideas and studio space. In any environment that is well suited to our individuality, inspiration can suddenly appear giving birth to the creative act, if we are attentive to its voice.
As Erwin Raphael McManus explains, “The creative act is a manifestation of imagination. Everything that exists began as an idea; everything we define as reality began as nothing more than imagination. Reality exists because it was first imagined. In fact, everything we know about the invisible comes to us in the form of the visible.” from The Artisan Soul
I hope you experience a moment of insight this week, and bring forth something visible from the invisible that you can share with others, and enrich their lives through your creativity.
Incubation is the process of incubating, which is, maintaining conditions favorable for promoting development. Most often, this refers to the incubating of eggs laid by a mother bird or hen. In the creative process, however, it means fostering conditions favorable to the development of the fine art product.
Two of the definitions of fine art are:
(1) Creative art, especially visual art, whose products are to be appreciated primarily or solely for their imaginative, aesthetic, or intellectual content;
(2) An activity requiring great skill or accomplishment.
Clearly, the hatching of baby birds and the process of painting, printmaking or photography are fine art. Both require a great deal of skill, patience, and perseverance, with hope that the unseen product will become visible at some time in the future, yielding a degree of aesthetic satisfaction and enjoyment.
During the incubation period, I am often unaware of what triggers the contemplation of the details of a piece I have not yet begun, such as, the size of the work, the medium to be used, or the color palette. However, as the project begins to take shape in my mind, images are collected, and details written on my phone, in a notebook, or on a coffee shop napkin. Some ideas are later used; many are discarded.
As James Taylor suggests, “It can takes days, or weeks, or months or sometimes even years . . . you’ll think about writing about a book or piece of music, and you’re writing about it and you just leave it to the side for a while, and then you come back to it. Now the interesting thing about the incubation stage is that to a certain extent it is not really under your control how long that stage will take.”
I think the important part of this stage of the creative process is found in the definition of incubation: maintaining conditions favorable to promoting development. It’s interesting to note that the origin of the word comes from the Latin, incubare, and means to lie or recline on. And, this part of the process may literally mean taking time out from daily activities to find that place of peace and tranquility, and allowing yourself time to meditate, to ponder, to muse—to pray.
“Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?” from the Book of Job