I think of childhood as an explosion of creativity. For most people, growing up and earning a living means leaving all that behind. But an artist never leaves that behind. Edwin Mullhouse was my way of exploring the child as artist and, under the guise of childhood, something larger.
Interpretation
Childhood is a time of creativity that many abandon in adulthood, but artists retain that childlike imagination.
In this quote, Steven Millhauser reflects on the idea that childhood is a period rich with creativity and imagination, a vital part of an artist's identity. He suggests that while many people lose their creative instincts as they grow up and take on adult responsibilities, true artists manage to preserve that childhood essence in their work, allowing them to explore deeper themes and ideas through the lens of their imaginative beginnings.
In practice
During a creative workshop, I shared this quote to inspire participants to tap into their childhood creativity.
That afternoon he told me that the difference between human beings and animals was that human beings were able to dream while awake. He said the purpose of books was to permit us to exercise that faculty. Art, he said, was a controlled madness… He said books weren't made of themes, which you could write essays about, but of images that inserted themselves into your brain and replaced what you were seeing with your eyes.
Stories, like conjuring tricks, are invented because history is inadequate for our dreams.
Fat people are so rarely included in visual culture that fat is perceived as a blot on the landscape of sleek and slim.
When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.
What comes first? The melody, always. It's all about singing the melodies live in my head. They go in circles. I guess I'm quite conservative and romantic about the power of melodies. I try not to record them on my Dictaphone when I first hear them. If I forget all about it and it pops up later on, then I know it's good enough. I let my subconscious do the editing for me.
Storytelling is ultimately a creative act of pattern recognition. Through characters, plot and setting, a writer creates places where previously invisible truths become visible. Or the storyteller posits a series of dots that the reader can connect.
Musical composition, about which I know little, is a complicated art, and some contemporary music may be the equivalent of a complex abstract painting.
I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc. I prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass or other foreign matter added.
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