Objectives:

• Become familiar with ways in which spirituality influences artists
• Discuss the differences between spirituality and religion
• Examine spirituality as a generative force and a well spring for creativity

Artifact: Unit 07Creative Spirituality

1.How do you define “spirituality”?

In my opinion, spirituality is means concern with things of the spirit. That is usually used for describe people’s belief, such as people have the spirit of perseverance, positive enterprising spirit, and so on. Otherwise, that is also can be used to describe people’s personal value. For example, some people put the focus on family life, such as some housewives. So in their view, the spiritual pillar of the family is that they all have, so this also is their personal value. Thus, this is my idea about the spirituality.

2.Does spirituality differ from religion?

I think spirituality is different from religion, because in my opinion, although spirituality is a kind of belief, there is no rule that you must strictly follow one and only one thought that prevails, you can create your own spirituality. Because different people have different backgrounds and they are raised in different areas, so they must be different with each other, which are why they have different religions. However, spirituality is not totally same with the religion, because people’s spirit is can be same, no matter where are they come from, such as two people, they are both have the spirit of perseverance, many people have this spirit, so that is the most different between spirituality and religion.

3.How do you define “creativity”?

In my opinion, creativity is means people have abilities to create something. I think creativity is shows your own works, which should be different from others. If you want to create you have to get rid of all conditionings, otherwise, your creativity will be nothing but copying. I always think about a question, what would I do differently if I had the time and energy to tap into my creativity? Because I think everyone has his/her inherent ability of creativity can be found, so we need to exercise ourselves more, think more and get more creation.

4.What is the source of creativity?

I think our life is have a lot of material can support people to create more things. A lot of artists’ creative inspiration is derived from the life around. However, in general, the most simple, that people don’t notice things can give people a lot of inspiration to create new things. So people should learn from the things around to find the different parts, and combine with their own ideas, it is a good way to exercise people’s creativity. Thus, I think the best source of creativity is from people’s life.

Reflection:

The reason why I choose this picture is because I think inspiration is like a sign to give people more suggestions and told them where is the ‘exit’. In my opinion, artists often have a lot of inspiration, they will take inspiration in their works, make their work more spirituality. Their inspiration is usually based on what happened around and see people or things, they observed the angle is not the same with us, what we see is usually very plain, but they often think of the deeper meaning, which is why artists have more inspiration than we do. In the article “Deeply Seeing”, the author, Grey states, “artists need to be able to see on each level in order to bring technical beauty, archetypal beauty, and spiritual beauty to their work” (P.73). That means artists always want to bring spiritual things from their life to their works, such as beauty things. They want to through this to make their works more spiritual and let more people like their works. Otherwise, he mentions “Inspiration means access to spirit. Spirit brings vision to the artist via the imagination, the multidimensional media center of our minds” (Grey, P82). The author points out that artists’ spirit is come from some images and from lots of social media. So that tell us everything happens in our side is can be a good idea or a inspiration for artists. I think that is true, because my painting teacher always tell me that when you see an apple, you should know which part of the apple is shaded, and which part of apple is brighter than other side, when you know that you can draw the apple well. I always remember that words, because I think even artists have more inspirations than us, but they are still learning from the beginning, from the students to a good artist.

Citation:

Grey, A. (2001). Art as Spiritual Practice. The Mission of Art (1st ed., pp. 205-233). Boston & London: Shambhala.

Future:

In the future, I will pay more attention about the things happened around me, because I think that when people become sensitive about the things happened around them, they will have more inspirations, and they will become more creative.So, I think that inspitations are come from people’s daily life.

Table of Contents:

Main Page

Artifact # 1: Life Values Assessment

Artifact # 2: What is Art For Essay

Artifact#3: Food as Art Response

Artifact #4: The Art of Personal Adornment Discussion

Artifact #5 – Horror

Artifact #6 – Creative Spirituality

Artifact #7 – Technology

Artifact #8 – Remixing Culture

Bibliography