Sunday morning is a working day in Israel but ever since I lived in other places in the world where Sunday is a leisure day, I try not to rush into the week and slide into it easily ,without haste. It means, usually sitting with a cup of coffee in one of the many of the lovely cafes in my neighborhood (Florentin) and do some morning sketching. In “the Artist’s Way” the famous and influential book by Julia Cameron on the spiritual path to higher creativity , I was very disappointed to realize that she doesn’t mention the sketching as a valid complementary for writing, especially when by the time her first book came out there were already many concepts and ideas that connect visual thinking with creative thought. It is true that Rudolf Arnheim, being somewhat a unique personality in his thorough and academic writings has never gained much popularity outside the academic circles but I would expect that anyone who is writing today on the subject of creativity and art, should at least read one or two of his groundbreaking works.
Another influential writer on the subject is Betty Adwards that used her psychological background to make the connection between the complex interactions of the two half’s of the brain to point to the fact that left and the right hemispheres behave differently when it comes to processing information. One, the left hemisphere, being more linear , logically and mathematically oriented, while the right hemisphere is more intuitive and spatially oriented, leaning towards complex non linear and therefore more artistically inclined space organization.
I am not sure if it was Rudolf Arnheim himself who has criticized Betty Adwards ideas for putting too much emphasis in the wrong place claiming that it is not really important in what part of our anatomy reside the creative impulse, the right or the left side of the brain or in the stomach for that matter. In spite of the popular beliefs according to which , creativity is reserved to special few and it is certainly not something that can be tought or learned it is becoming more and more apparent that given the right attiudes and the right approach, creativity can be enhanced and cultivated and generally elevated to a much higher level then it isright now in our overtly verbal lenear and logicaly oriented society.
