The Childlike Artist Within YOU

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – Pablo Picasso

Picasso once said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

What does this really mean, and how can we use Picasso’s wisdom as a means of tapping into our innate creativity? I’ll explore this from two sides, one scientific, one spiritual.

First off, what does it mean to be an artist?

Based on my own research into creativity, art occupies a central role between the objective world of science and the subject world of religion. In other words, art draws upon both the eminent and the transcendent: for any artistic creation to delight us in someway, it must have some sort of form that we can perceive, as well as a bit of seeming magic or mystery that delights us in some way.

According to science, humans are born with a brain that isn’t fully formed until well into so-called early adulthood. That means during childhood, especially early childhood, there are parts of our adult brains that aren’t even there yet, specifically the executive functioning parts of the brain. And, through the work of researchers such as Charles Limb, there is a particular part of the executive function, known as the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a region responsible for impulse control, that doesn’t form until children are nine or ten years old. In Limb’s research of putting jazz musicians into fMRI machines, he has noted that when the musician begins to improvise, the DLPFC turns off, allowing the musician to enter into a flow state, a state of creative outpouring.

In other words, children below the age of 9 or 10 don’t edit themselves the way adults do, which, as we all know, can have its plusses and minuses. It can be amazing, funny, and inspiring or it can be messy, annoying, and even dangerous. Going back to the trained musician, thought there’s and outpouring, that outpouring also has structure: it is bound, like the banks of a river, by the structure of music itself and the musician’s many years of practice.

Now for the spiritual. Here’s what the Sufis, the mystical branch of Islam, have to say about being human: When a person is born, the soul, the more eternal awareness, starts to go to sleep. And when a person dies, the soul returns to its source where it is asked, “what did you dream of in this lifetime?” If we look at childhood and creativity through this lens, it is the time where “the soul” is still in the foreground of experience.

Regardless of your beliefs, such a view is a powerful take on creativity: That both the child and the childlike adult artist, are both tapped in to the eternal, which breaths life and vitality into their creations. For example, even though a child’s creations are often technically challenged, they still delight us do to their unfettered aliveness.

So what can we take away from all of this?

One of the ways we can re-engage our childlike artist within is to 1) recognize that creativity is the basis of our existence and not some exception and 2) learn how to play and be silly.

Per this first point, one of the reason’s we stop being creative is we simply stop identifying as such. In other words, the 9 or 10 year old may simply, and quite unconsciously look around the room and say to themselves, “Billy over there is creative, but I’m not.” Such a belief can limit out ability to drop into creative flow states simply because we don’t acknowledge that we have the capacity to do so.

Secondly, learning how to play and be silly is serious business. Play, our ability to drop our need to conform and behave in a particular way vis-a-vis curiosity and exploration, is incredibly important, not to mention super fun and satisfying. And when we effort to re-engage this aspect of us, to re-engage the childlike artist within, we experience the original meaning of being silly: to be touched by God, or, if you prefer, to be freed of the shackles of our own limiting beliefs.

Though you may not be a child anymore, you are still at your core a creator. As such allow your childlike curiosity to surface. Instead of planning you day like a sensible adult, try saying, if I were in the first grade, what would I do to day? It will prompt that part of you brain that is pre-conventional and amazingly creative.

If you have children, don’t get caught in the rut of simply shuffling them about from one task to another. Spend time learning from them. When we can let go of our own adult agendas, and drop into their worlds, we discover amazing teachers, teacher wanting to interact with the child that remains within each and every one of us.

Finally, if you have any comments please leave them below.

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