Viggo Mortensen is an actor, painter, photographer, musician and founder of a publishing company.
He once commented:
“Photography, painting or poetry – those are just extensions of me, how I perceive things, they are my way of communicating.”
Read more in my article Multitalented and Creative.
He has also talked about staying creative:
“The function of artists is to keep people childlike in a positive way. To keep open to the world.”
But, he notes, art can be far more than “childish”:
“Apart from traveling to different countries, to different communities, to different parts of your city, I think that art is one of the greatest anti-war and anti-poverty weapons.”
I found that quote on the Tumblr site Viggo Mortensen’s Art.
Mortensen has talked about his admiration for actor and photographer Dennis Hopper and his endless curiosity – certainly part of being childlike.
See my post Curiosity and Creativity for more perspectives.
What is the value of staying childlike for artists?
Creativity researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes in his article “The Creative Personality: Ten paradoxical traits of the creative personality that “Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility” and that “Creative people tend to be smart yet naive at the same time.”
That is from his book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.
A child mindset
Sherri Fisher also writes about this in her Positive Psychology News Daily article Nurturing Your Creative Mindset: “Do you ever wish you were more creative? New research has shown that adults can be primed to become more creative simply by being asked to think like children.”
Read more in post: Childlike creativity: Nurturing Your Creative Mindset By Cat Robson.
Like children, many creators have multiple creative interests, and may continue to develop them as adults to be multitalented artists.
~~~
Douglas Eby (M.A./Psychology) is author of the The Creative Mind series of sites which provide “Information and inspiration to help creative people thrive.”
ø ø ø ø