Adults who want their crayons back

“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”. -Einstein

I firmly believe that all humans are creative, but some societies value that quality more than others. In Ireland poets held a high place of honor and most monarchies employed court jesters until fairly recently. In America artists and poets starve, while weapons inventors thrive. Leonardo da Vinci solved this problem in his day by designing weapons for the ruling Medici family while doing some painting on the side.

We cannot stamp out human creativity, though war-like, mercantile societies try. Artists and musicians, not revolutionaries, are always the least conformist members of society and you can see that may be a problem for the powers-that-shouldn’t be.

But all members of society are needed for the survival of that society and conformity means doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result (the definition of insanity.) When a thing doesn’t work, TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Duh.

All humans are creative, but can that spark be reignited after years of being stomped on? I think so, so I teach a little art class for adults who want their crayons back. These are “regular” people, not artists, but they always make art-and have fun doing it. Last night we did watercolors, one medium that you cannot control- water does what it wants, carrying pigments around like ideas flowing down the river of time itself.

I teach them the rules, then encourage them to break them. Subversive, indeed. And very liberating.