Creativity And The Mind

Monday, April 18th, 2011 at 6:16 am

‘Creativity and the Mind’ – this was the subject of a fascinating conversation between author Sue Woolfe and Professor Russell Meares , which I attended last week at the UTS (University of Technology) in Sydney. It was moderated by Bernie Hobbs.

This discourse examined not only the nature of creative thinking and the role it plays in our lives but also its importance in child development. They spoke of the research being done currently, which is looking into the very nature of this kind of thought.

It seems that the great differentiating factor is that creative thought contains no language. It is capable of making quantum leaps with unerring accuracy into unknown territory and is completely non linear in nature.

I was fascinated to learn that Sue’s creative process is in many ways similar to my own. It goes like this:

Gather lots of information or in her case write what ever comes into your head
Keep doing the above until it feels like time to do something with it
Begin looking for patterns of information – allow the characters to speak and develop by themselves
Get out of your own way
Pull it all together.

Next post I would like to look at this process as I relate it to art and the painting process.

Works by these authors

The Metaphor of Play – Russell Meares -

In my Opinion The metaphor of play is a profoundly important book by one of the greatest contemporary thinkers and researchers in the field of psychotherapy. – Dougal Steel, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry

Leaning Towards Infinity – Sue Woolfe This book was named in 1999 in Australia as one of the most important books of the century. It won Australia’s distinguished prize, the Christina Stead Award, for the year it was published, as well as the Asia Pacific Region section of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was shortlisted for the Tip Tree prize in the US. It was short-listed for almost every major Australian prize.