Venus of the Fields II, ceramic sculpture with engobes, liza myers
Creativity is a drug
I cannot live without.
– Cecil B. de Mille
I can only speak for myself.
One of my earliest memories is sitting in the sun in the field below my home making things with sticky red Maryland clay. I was three or four years old.
How did I know that the clay would hold together? Someone must have showed me, perhaps one of my older brothers or my father or mother. Or was it a serendipitous, innate attraction to red mud in the midst of a relentlessly green Maryland meadow? The ditch drained the fields below our house. After a storm it would flow for days, ebbing from a torrent to a trickle, then finally only the enticing mud remained, glossy and slick on the edges of pools and puddles. I was happy for hours and days sitting towheaded and mud-covered in the sun, creating little objects that melted in the next rain.
I took a course on the philosophy of creativity in grad school at Maryland Institute College of Art (now mostly referred to as MICA) Ultimately the course was somewhat disappointing because the basic premise seemed to be that humans make art to keep busy.
Not so.
Lillian's Nest, acrylic on canvas 8" x 10", liza myer
I make art to communicate something that is within me that can’t be expressed in any other way.
I make art because it is immensely satisfying to create beauty and calm in this chaotic world.
I make art because the process allows me to choose my world.
I make art to keep myself happy and to share that with others.
I make art because it’s fun.
I make art because I promised that I would.
I also make art because if time passes without immersing myself deeply into the realm of creativity I have terrible dreams at night. Vivid horrific night mares. It doesn’t matter if the art I create is joyful or cathartic in some other way. But the darkness is illuminated and I can sleep.
What/who are the demons that drive me? What/why the urge to communicate? Why does the very act of creating art make me happy?
I don’t know, but if I make art I am at peace.
Why do you make art?
Hmm… I think I make art for the same reasons you do. In reference to the red Maryland mud- I made mud pies out of our central-Texas dark brown clay soil. I decorated them with natural objects.
I love looking at your art.
Thank you for the opportunity to reflect on this wonderful question! I make art because it is a meditation for me. It gives me a chance to quietly observe the” evidence of the unseen”. I love to discover new ways of looking at things. It is exhilarating to communicate directly from my eyes to my head to my heart to my hands to the paper or canvas. I find that making art encompasses al areas of my life!
I make art because if I don’t I am filled with a horrible sad feeling that my life is passing and I am not doing what I was made to do. And like you, Liza, to communicate. Great post 🙂
Thanks for the responses everyone!