hi, I am Alex and I am an art student. For as long as I've been drawing, people (mostly relatives) have been asking me where my creativity comes from. People on my father's side of the family tell me that is certainly did not come from my dad, because he can't even make stick figures look good. My mom's relatives say that I must have got it from my grandmother or great aunt so and so, because they were artists also.
For the most part, my dad's family is just a big group of logical thinkers. They are very business minded and straightforward. My mom's side, however, are a bit more outside the box. They are muscians, artists, and educators. According to Pinker, it would make sense, then that I would inherit the "creative gene" from them.
But what if there is no "creative gene?" Thinking about my past, I've realized that I hadn't just one day picked up a pencil and created masterpieces. Before my mom became an elementary school teacher, she was a daycare provider. I grew up surrounded by play dough, forts under the table, crayola crayons, and sing along tapes. From the time I was old enough to walk up until middle school, I was surrounded by arts and crafts. Now that my mom works outside of the home, she doesn't do many artsy related things. It makes me wonder if I had been brought up differently, if I hadn't been introduced to all of these new ways of thinking, if my "blank slate" had been filled with something other than glitter glue and feathers, like, maybe, soccer or croquet, would I have turned out differently?
Thinking about all of this nature Vs nurture stuff makes my head spin and I've come to realize that it's nearly impossible for me to come up with a definite answer.
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It seems that most of us focused on the nature vs. nurture concern for this post, eh? I had, for the most part, the same issues that you did. Similarly, I am into the arts, but I was not surrounded by them as a child as you were. I guess I don't have anything too profound to say here except that I understand the lack of a conclusion drawn. It's a confusing thing, man.
ReplyDeleteI can completely relate. My mom was an art teacher and majored in design in college, and I myself am, humbly, a fairly good artist. Since my mom taught at my school, all of my peers like to say that I got my talent from my mother, and I can't say I disagree. But that brings up the question of whether or not getting a "creative gene" means you'll also get the "talented" gene. And are they the same? Neither of my brothers are extremely gifted at sketching or painting, though they were both raised by an art teacher just like me. But one of my brothers still loves to create, he simply relies on photography to be able to do so. I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say, but it is interesting to think about when it comes to creativity, since being talented in the arts is largely thought to be something you cannot learn, but are just born with.
ReplyDeleteYeah, this whole nature vs. nurture stuff is confusing and trying to make sense of it all just makes it more confusing. I had a similar experience when I was growing up which lead me to purse a degree in Mechanical Enginnering but the weird thing is that when those influences went away, my whole idea of what I want to do in the future changed from ME to Japanese and Cultural Studies which is funny because no one in my family has had any experience with them and none of them are good with learning languages. So it doesn't make much sense in both nature and nurture to me.
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