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Recovering the Creative Impulse 4/13/2016 7:42:36 PM
During frequent breaks from his writing work, Gary Michael Dault, a very creative man, filled numerous notebooks with sketches he made using ink and acrylics. Ten of these notebooks are on exhibit at the Peak Gallery in Toronto.
I visited the gallery twice. As I turned the pages of the notebooks, I saw that many of the drawings are black and/or gray with white spaces between the images and vivid splashes of color. Some include words, a few are all words. Pages and pages of heads, full figures, animals, and abstract forms. A video playing in one corner of the gallery shows a hand turning the leaves of one notebook, and eleven framed single pictures hang on a wall across the room.
Along with being a visual artist, Mr. Dault works in poetry, philosophy, art criticism, and journalism. He uses his drawings as mind-refreshers. When his writing-work stalls, he takes a few minutes or less to draw a sketch, then goes back to his writing with new ideas. He overcomes creative lulls with a different form of creativity, making visual images that are accomplished and original enough to appeal to strangers. The mental processes involved with sketching help his writing and writing benefits his sketches, so his creative flow continues.
His exhibit, then, reminded me of what I've come to recognize as characteristics of creativity:
We don't create anything out of nothing. We use tools and materials that are available to us.
We create by using sounds or images or groups of words that already exist. We make new combinations, based on nature or the ideas of people who have gone before us.
We sometimes think about a project we're working on even when our conscious minds are far away from it.
We may work on a project for a long time and the flow of ideas dries up. We turn away to something else, and when we go back to the stalled project, we find that difficulties have vanished and fresh ideas come to us.
Ideas sometimes flow in surges.
Creativity can have a therapeutic effect, both for the maker and the consumer.
While he was working on them, Mr. Dault never expected anyone to see his notebooks, but Zack, the proprietor of Peak Gallery talked him into showing them. I asked Zack what he thought the notebooks might mean to an observer, now that they've become public. He said he hoped that visitors to the gallery would engage in dialogues with Mr. Dault's notebooks. Each viewer will have his or her own response to them. He supposed that some of us will notice a connection between words and visual images, since Mr. Dault is known mostly for his writings and these pictures are in the form of books.
Taking Zack's insights a step further, I say it doesn't seemed far-fetched to suppose that someone who studied Mr. Dault's methods and his output might find a way to overcome for her- or himself a hindrance to creativity.
