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I’m reading Creating A Life Worth Living by Carol Lloyd. I picked this book because I’m trying to figure out the place I want painting to play in my life.
This week…Chapter 4, “The Kaleidoscope of Creativity,†examines ten distinct creative types, their employment challenges, special talents, and particular needs. I found this chapter very interesting.
The artistic profiles are:
Collaborative Creativity – Teacher, Realizer, Interpreter, Healer, Leader
Individual Creativity – Maker, Thinker, Generator, Inventor, Mystic
After reading through the artistic profiles, I am a Maker, Thinker and Mystic. It’s interesting to me that all my profiles fall under “Individual Creativity,” but that makes sense because I’ve never longed for or especially enjoyed collaboration.
Here are some of the hallmarks for each of my artistic profiles:
Maker – For most makers, their greatest joy springs from creating things with their hands. They value craftsmanship and material creation over abstract conceptualization.
Thinker – Thinkers enjoy measuring, interpreting, analyzing, and theorizing. Their art is the art of allowing an observation to bear fruit in the mind. They feel at home in abstractions and take pleasure in seeing and inventing patterns in the world.
Mystic – Mystics tend to be less product-oriented than many other artistic types. The ideas and objects that spring from their labors are side effects rather than the culmination of the creative process.
Here are the exercises I did for each of my artistic profiles. The exercises are intended to help you clarify your career path.
Maker Exercise – Try building the elements of your perfect working environment and look for clues within that.
Thinker Exercise – Go to a library and look through biographies of people you admire. Look at the course of their careers and how they found jobs that served their creative ambitions. Make a list of your favorite creative thinkers and their jobs. Now sit and write a list of the jobs you think will keep you in a constant state of curiosity and intellectual challenge.
Mystic Exercise – Make a list of the essences you want to bring into your life. Meditate on the perfect situation for your career and creative woes. At the end of the meditation, write down your ideas.
Much of the work in this chapter helps you start the process of discovering work that supports your artistic profile(s)…whether it’s your ideal job or supportive work leading to your ideal job. I feel that I’m where I want to be with regards to my day job. I did these exercises with an eye towards how I want specific creative pursuits, particularly my painting and my writing, to expand and grow. I’m looking towards my “retirement” career. I think that changes how I approach a lot of these exercises because I don’t have a “dissatisfaction” with my current job/life. I’m grateful for that.
What this chapter reaffirmed for me:
Painting my girls, writing my blog and doing things the way I want to do them are the three things that are first and foremost in my mind and heart. They are the things I think of the most and that I want to pursue with the most focus. Here’s how this chapter helped me understand them better.
My Maker Profile
Painting my girls -Â It’s important for me to always be “making” something. I love creating my girl paintings. I can make them, and make them and make them, but they’re always different. I think that’s one reason I never enjoyed making crafts to sell. After I make one of something, I want to make something completely new.
Writing my blog – I love writing my blog…something new everyday.
Doing things my way – Both my girls and my blog allow me to always be creating something new and something that is totally me.
My Thinker Profile
Painting my girls – I can see my thinker profile coming into play with my Inspiration Mondays and Results Thursdays. I love to take an abstract idea and then translate it into a painting.
Writing my blog – I think (no pun intended) this is the reason I love my blog so much. It makes me think and plan and craft something.
Doing things my way – From the book…“Because thinkers feel so comfortable and connected to the ideas themselves, they don’t always see the point in spending so much time on the crafting of the form.” Â and “Their creativity thrives in the half darkness of confusion, when the unsolved problem grows beautiful as it is turned over and over, the way a coarse rock is made smooth in a rock tumbler.” To me this says that I always have to leave plenty of room to mix things up and change my mind.
My Mystic Profile
Painting my girls – Currently, if I think of my “ideal” business plan, I would only paint and sell one-of-a-kind, original paintings. I think that impulse is strongly related to my mystic profile. I love the idea because if someone purchases a painting, it belongs totally to them, it’s special and it speaks to their heart.
Writing my blog – When I started writing my blog, my main objective was to put myself out there as a friendly, helpful, positive person because I wanted to connect with others and share myself and my journey. That’s still my main objective.
Doing things my way – Money has never been a motivator for me. Don’t get me wrong, I love all of the cool, good things money can do, but I’ve never been motivated to take a job or a path because of money…there was always something else. I see that continuing in how I deal with my art. Generally, that means I don’t make the best business decisions, but I always try to make the best decisions for my heart.
I must say that this chapter brought me some peace, especially acknowledging how strongly I fit the mystic profile. So many times, I make decisions that don’t make sense in a “business” or “success” way of thinking, and now I have a little insight into why.
