One of my goals this month is to extend this project past my own personal journey with creativity and really have a conversation with people about it. Combinatorial creativity is at the heart of this path into possibility.
A few days ago, I interviewed Hansy Lizano, an artist that I had met on our recent trip to Costa Rica. We talked about creativity and his creative process.
(photo courtesy of Hansy Lizano)
Q: Do you have a creative routine or ritual?
A: No. I work in the moment but I listen to music everyday!
Colorida deforestación ” acrílico sobre tela , 70x50cm , 2015
Q: Where do you get your inspiration from?
A: Everything around me is something I have to make using my style “chromoluminarism.” Light is everything and reflection. This is my inspiration – to see how light works over things I see, how I interpret the colour around me and then the artist is born.
Atardecer en Puerto Viejo ” acrílico sobre tela , 70x50cm , 2015.
Q: Any artists that inspire you?
A: Yes the artists who discovered this science like Van Gogh , Monet , Seurat.
Luz entrante ” acrílico sobre tela 50x70cm . 2015
Q: What is the earliest creative memory you have?
A: I made cartoons copies early in my childhood.
Q: When you are in a creative rut, what do you do to get out of it?
A: Hmmm…No. I am learning all the time so everything is practice. It’s easy if you don’t think you are making some professional work each time. It is all practice and one day, if I make something amazing, I know!
Manzanillo enfurecido ” acrílico sobre tela 145x115cm,2014
Q: How has art and creativity changed your life? What have you learned about yourself?
A: The art is plastic. It changes shape all the time and if you don’t change, the art will change you.
Q: Can you share one simple creative activity to do each day?
A: Drawing is the best form of observation!
Q: Draw anything?
A: Draw everything.
(Photo courtesy of Hansy Lizano)
Pintar es mi insatisfacción diaria al buscar la luz y su perfección, frecuencias de colores que pasan por mi pincel rebotando en el lienzo como música , melodias de colores que dan luminosidad a mi obra.
Painting is my dissatisfaction to the daily search for the light and its perfection, frequencies of colors that pass through my brush bouncing off the canvas like music , ring tones of colors that give light to my work.
-Hansy Lizano
If you are interested in purchasing any artwork from Hansy, please contact him via his Facebook page.
Thanks Hansy for your time and for sharing your story!
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Inspired by Hansy’s work with light and his advice to draw everything you see, here is today’s prompt:
Take those paints or pastels out today. Look up. What do you see?
You might pick a blue and do a wash over the whole page. But what else do you see? Do you see the light change the colour of the sky in some parts? Look closer. Is there a wisp of a cloud? You can take this prompt further and paint the same sky at dawn and at dusk or the night sky.
Try to articulate what you see and feel when you look up at the sky. List as many words as you can. Use all your senses.
When I was a child, blue skies would take up over half my page or it would be a blue line across the top.
Paint with the same abandon.
Here is a beautiful sky story that you can share with the kids or as simple inspiration for yourself.
Look here for some of the best skies in art.
And as an aside, according to a recent experiment looking at how colours influence the imagination, performed by psychologists in British Columbia, the colour blue had some striking results with respect to creativity:
While the people in the blue group performed worse on short-term memory tasks, they did far better on those requiring some imagination…In fact, subjects in the blue condition generated twice as many creative outputs as did subjects in the red condition.
According to the scientists, the color automatically triggers associations with the sky and ocean. We think about expansive horizons and diffuse light, sandy beaches and lazy summer days…This sort of mental relaxation makes it easier to daydream and pay attention to insights; we’re less focused on what’s right in front of us and more aware of the possibilities simmering in our imaginations. – Jonah Lehrer, Imagine: How Creativity Works
Expand and exhale today.
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You can leave a comment below or join my top secret life explorers group on Facebook if you want to share any discoveries or explorations. Friend me and I will send you an invite! You can share your thoughts or your creative expressions there. You can also post on Instagram using #may_BE2015
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