The three "I"s of Creativity - Inspiration, Imagination, Ideas

Ever hear of creative juices?  Well, if you don’t have these three things in your creative cupboard, it will be hard to get those juices flowing!  Let’s face it, what makes an artist an artist is action and the action isn’t just a willy nilly movement, it is deliberate movement that gets things done, and done in a way that allows you to reach your goals. 

All people can be inspired, but no artist can be creative without it. Inspiration is the flood gate opening, the kettle placed on the burner, the oh baby that is so cool.  You not only have to have it, you have to feed on it with a hunger so deep you want more and more of it.  It may come visually, audibly, from a feel, from a friend, from travel, from an experience, even a glance.  But it has one purpose creatively ….. to feed your imagination.

Your imagination is like a reference guide and with no references to guide you, you are lost.  An artist needs to reach within and retrieve that which has been placed there by inspiration, even if that which inspires you to create is right in front of you. It is your imagination that takes the inspiration right in front of you and turns it into an idea of what to do.

Ideas, formed from our imaginations and fueled by inspiration, are what we then actually create.  As artists we formulate ideas into creativity by way of action. We make ideas a reality.  That’s what we do, and we can’t do it out of order. It is the personal and inner process that brings us not only ideas, but the choice from hopefully many ideas, to what will becomes art through us.  Art isn’t just doing, or the act of doing. It is the act of doing through creativity, and creativity is the act of taking ideas, formed from your imagination, inspired by the world around you.

Live An Artful Life!

Tom