ON PLACING THE FROG: A Consideration of Creative Development and Cosmic Chaos

Sarah E. Theller. Watchers (part III). Oil paint on canvas board, 9×12’’. 2021.

The act of creativity is an ordering of cosmic chaos. When considering aspects of creativity, particularly in developmental stages, it is crucial to keep in mind that creative acts, including writing and painting, seek to construct a sense of understanding of the world around us. The universe is not ordered, yet we crave organization and structure, especially within ourselves.

We make to say something. Each decision that goes into the creative act shapes the resulting statement. Artmaking and academic writing are two creative acts considered opposite one another, yet they are both inventive and interconnected ways of gaining understanding and making a statement. As a multidisciplinary artist and scholar, I engage in both the creative acts of writing and painting. As is to be expected when showing one’s work, I am often asked about my process or reasons for composing my work a particular way. Recently, I was asked about my oil painting Watchers. The primary question was why I placed the frog, with magnified scale, where I did. This question made me think about how I should answer, because I realized it might not sound particularly eloquent to say, “I don’t know, I just knew it went there.” Often, after creating a painting, I will find meaning in the placement of my iconography and in the structure of my composition. In Watchers, I knew the frog needed to be sitting on a planet floating above the main scene, but I wasn’t sure why initially. After finishing the painting, I knew I placed the frog where I did because it allowed for an accentuation of the theme of duality, as I intended–albeit subconsciously–for the frog to represent the notion of the ‘all-seeing-eye,’ which can be interpreted as either a protective gaze or something more scopophilic. The frog is a watchful, protective figure, yet it creates, possibly, a sense of unease or discomfort for the viewer. I realize, post-creation, why I have placed the frog the frog above the main scene: the placement and scale, even as I didn’t initially realize it, was my way of exploring and making sense of my conflicting feelings toward authority and ‘protective’ figures.

In writing, a similar post-creation realization occurs after knowing we must write a certain thing. Why do we feel compelled to use certain words? Why do we know we have to use a certain word sometimes, even if the sentence is not fully formed yet? Ultimately, it’s synthesis: we have a partial (a word, a symbol) that we know is important and belongs to a whole (a sentence, a painting), even if we haven’t entirely figured out how to combine those partials. Creative processes act as synthesizers of partial information in order to form a whole. In other words, creative processes enable us to figure our shit out.

Why do we have to make certain statements, and why do we have to place the frog where we place it? The relationship between scholarship and artmaking can be more easily understood by examining of the goal of creative pursuits, which emanates overwhelmingly from our need to understand our perceptions of the universe: we make to say something. Academia and artistry are quite significantly linked because play and imagination are necessary to advance an idea. We may feel compelled to paint certain iconographic symbols just as we may feel compelled to arrange words in a certain manner: this compulsion, this curious drive, is part of synthesis, an act which may be defined as the combination of ideas to form a theory. The creative act and the engagement of synthesis stems from the desire to bring order, sense, and meaning to our worlds.

Creative acts can act as catalysts in gaining comprehension and appreciation of not only the world around us but also the world within ourselves, as creatives can often gain a better understanding of their world, their personal identity, through self-expression. Justification for decisions made during the creation process is also necessary, even if that justification is only granted to the creator themselves. Not only do creators engage in synthesis to understand their perceptions, but creators also engage in a validation of their perceptions during the act of writing or artmaking. We create to get ideas out of our heads, and we create to feel more connected to the world we seek to make sense of. While the cosmos is an inherently untamable disarrangement, our inner universes, microcosms within the macrocosm, can be harmonized to our needs. Our perceptions of the outer universe can be organized to help make sense of the chaos. The frog is placed the way it’s placed as part of an attempt to synthesize and organize chaotic information.

Leonardo da Vinci was a multidisciplinary creator who fundamentally believed in the connection between academics and artistry. Play and imagination can advance ideas, while scholarship and analytical thinking can solidify ideas. Play, experimentation, and scholarship open doors to what it is we are trying to say, reflective of our perceptions. Some doors may not open, but this is just as good. Authors C. Dominik Guss, Sarah Ahmed, and Dietrich Dorner explain general psychological mechanisms which demonstrate why extraordinary feats of creativity, seen in da Vinci’s work, can occur even with little to no formal education. According to Guss et al., Graham Wallas (1926) postulated four elemental steps of the creative process, which involve conscious and unconscious thought working interconnectedly[1]. Wallas proposed that creativity begins with information gathering resulting from initial curiosity, which leads to connections and solutions (or something ‘clicks,’ answering the initial question)[2]. Semiotic theory, which involves abductive thinking, informs how meaning is constructed. Through abductive thought, an individual can derive the best and most plausible conclusion from an observation: this ability to make logical inferences (or ‘educated guesses’) stems from the mental connections made from observations and experiences. Arrangements of experiences form memories which inform meaning. Semiotics and abduction, therefore, are informed by personal experience, and personal experience shapes meaning for every individual; for example, some associate the dove with Christian connotations while others associate the dove as a worldly symbol of peace. The way we associate meaning with words and symbols stems from personal experience and development[3].

Curiosity drives the creative process, as our desire to ‘find out’ and awaken a sense of understanding of the world around us incites production. While he had no formal education, de Vinci is regarded, even half a millennium after his time, as one of the most brilliant multidisciplinary creators. He was a writer, artist, scientist, inventor, and more, as he utilized his relentless curiosity as a motivator to ‘find out’[4]. He exemplifies the effectiveness of multidisciplinary approaches to problem solving. Authors Guss et al. explain, working on multiple projects at a time likely “allowed da Vinci to relax his focus and become less fixated” on using a limited set of ideas to solve the problem he was facing[5]. This process is called incubation, which “helps… the mind to rest and to forget about unsuccessful attempts to solve problems,” allowing for better solutions to replace unsuccessful attempts[6]. This can be seen in writing, as author Anne Lamott states the first draft allows you to “channel what ever voices and visions come through and onto the page”[7]; we write drafts and come back to them for this reason.

Human intelligence is, in essence, our creativity, as creativity enables us the capability to adapt to new environments and scenarios. Overinclusive thinking may be defined as the inability to preserve conceptual boundaries during incubation, which allows for one’s scope of perception to be broadened; therefore, individuals who engage in overinclusive thinking can make connections between two seemingly unrelated objects, topics, or ideas[8]. Consider the bird and the flying machine: birds and machines are probably considered unrelated to most folks, yet da Vinci saw a connection that allowed for further problem solving in his inventions. He placed the frog on the back of a bird then experimented to figure out why it had to go there.

Do I always have an immediate understanding of why I’ve placed the frog where I’ve placed it? Absolutely not. Sometimes my initial “I know this needs to go here” feeling gets overridden by a stronger “I know this needs to go here” feeling later. This happens in academic writing as well: sometimes we choose a word or idea that later becomes replaced with a better fitting word. Creative processes are just that, processes. This occurs similarly in writing and artmaking because creators make to say something. Sometimes we realize, after the initial “I know this needs to go here” feeling, there is a better way to say what we have to say. This is synthesis of external and internal cosmic chaos. Thomas Edison comes to mind as I write this. Edison famously stated he did not fail before inventing the lightbulb, he simply “found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Sometimes we know exactly how to place the frog, and other times we try a placement that isn’t successful. We fail when we stop: the rest is all experimentation and synthesis.

Written by Sarah E. Theller

Bibliography

Guss, C. Dominik, Sarah Ahmed, and Dietrich Dorner. “From da Vinci’s Flying Machines to a Theory of the Creative Process”, Perspectives on Psychological Science 16, no. 6 (2021): 0 – 14. Accessed 2 Nov, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620966790

Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Drafts,” Language Awareness: Readings for College Writers, Ed. by Paul Eschholz, Alfred Rosa, and Virginia Clark. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005: 93-96. Accessed 2 Nov. 2021. LINK

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[1] C. Dominik Guss, Sarah Ahmed, and Dietrich Dorner, “From da Vinci’s Flying Machines to a Theory of the Creative Process”, Perspectives on Psychological Science 16, no. 6 (2021): 2.

[2] Ibid: 2.

[3] Ibid: 8.

[4] Ibid: 2.

[5] Ibid: 8.

[6] Ibid: 8.

[7] Anne Lamott, “Shitty First Drafts”, Language Awareness: Readings for College Writers, Ed. byPaul Eschholz, Alfred Rosa, and Virginia Clark. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005: 93-96.

[8] C. Dominik Guss, Sarah Ahmed, and Dietrich Dorner, “From da Vinci’s Flying Machines to a Theory of the Creative Process”, Perspectives on Psychological Science 16, no. 6 (2021): 11.