Nina Paley

"All creative work is derivative"-- filmmaker Nina Paley photographed sculptures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and animated them in this gorgeous video to demonstrate her point that all creative work builds on what came before. Found via Brain Pickings.

An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists made a great invention by calling their activities hypotheses and experiments. They made it permissible to fail repeatedly until in the end they got the results they wanted. In politics or government, if you made a hypothesis and it didn’t work out, you had your head cut off. 

Polaroid inventor Edwin Land on embracing failure, among other insights on what it takes to innovate.

Via Exp.lore.com.

Focus

Trying to get my focus back onto my artwork, after a summer of losses and lovely slow days spent with my children.

 

(via Nanashi)

(via SquareAmerica)

From evencleveland:

After decades of working with artists and studying their behavior, Maisel realized that something very much like obsession was at the heart of the creative process. When he enlisted test subjects to obsess on purpose, he found improvements in their concentration, capacity for tackling big projects, and ability to solve problems -- artistic, personal, or professional.
And so, he reasoned, by giving our creative impulses time and space, they can develop into what he calls a productive obsession -- something you choose to engage in because it fascinates you and ultimately leads you to create something.


Read more at Wholeliving.com: Perfect Brainstorm: How to Tap Your Inner Genius