“Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.”
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
I've started reading Hidden Art, by Edith Schaeffer, and I've found it so encouraging both as a Christian and an artist (in the broader sense, i.e., a writer, sadly with no special talent for painting/sculpting/sketching). Here's an extended quote -- her thoughts really need no introduction.
What is creativity? What is it we do when we create something? We start with an idea, or a number of ideas. Something comes into our minds. We have a flow of ideas, sometimes a tremendous flow of ideas, at times in one direction, or at other times in another direction; or perhaps even ten directions at once. And we have to make a choice. We cannot do everything that comes into our minds, nor can we create everything that comes into our imaginations, whether it be in a very great or complicated area of science or art, or in a very mundane area . . . There is choice involved in the very simplest form of creativity, because as any set of possibilities comes into our minds, we have to choose.
Man, because he is limited, has a very limited choice. He is limited by time, as well as talent. He is limited by the resources at his disposal as well as in the skill to use what he has. We do not all have the talent to produce all the ideas that come into our minds . . .. A man might think of some great painting in his mind, but not be able to execute it on canvas at all, because he does not have the talent to paint.
But time is also involved. We each have a very limited number of hours in a day. Often I would like to add to those hours, but have never found a way to do it. There are just seven of those twenty-four-hour periods in a week, and a very limited number of weeks in a month, and there are only twelve months in a year. Then, how many years are there in a life? It really goes -- like that! It does not take long to disappear.
And so -- what can we get done in those few hours and days and weeks and years? We are limited by time and by areas of talent and ability. So our creativity is not on God's level at all. His creativity is unlimited and infinite. Nevertheless we have been created in His image, so we can be, and are made to be, creative.
Man has a capacity both for responding and producing, for communicating as well as being inspired. It is important to respond to the art of others, as well as to produce art oneself. It is important to inspire others to be creative as well as to communicate by one's own creative acts.
And, skipping ahead a bit:
Is a Christian -- one who is in communication daily with the Creator (communication made possible because of redemption through the blood of Christ) -- to divorce himself from the things God created and intended man to have, and which demonstrate the fact that man has been made in the image of God? In other words are we, who have been made in the image of our Creator, and who acknowledge and understand what that means because we know God exists, and experience communication with Him -- are we to be less creative than those who do not know that the Creator made them in His image, and who have no contact with Him?
It seems to me that the marks of personality -- love, communication, and moral sensitivity -- which are meant to sharpen as we are returning to communication with God, should lead to an increased rather than a decreased creativity. The Christian should have more vividly expressed creativity in his daily life, and have more creative freedom, as well as the possibility of a continuing development in creative activities.
[Quotes taken from p. 24-25 and p. 28-29 of Hidden Art]
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| Trinity College, Cambridge | February 2017 |
