JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum I'm Curious: Where Did Your Creative "Gene" Come From?

My Dad sings very well and there was always music of nearly every kind played constantly at our house. My Mom is a good writer and loves reading and poetry. She loves art too and could have been an artist if she had had the confidence and patience to do so. My cousin (Mom's side) is an artist as well. Two of my four sisters are very good at art. Both my parents are good ballroom dancers.

Mom saw that I was good at art and encouraged me by letting me have art supplies and lessons (which I dropped because the teachers didn't teach me anything I didn't already know, and then when I was just about to finish the piece, they grabbed the brush and without even asking if I needed help, said, " All you need is the finishing touch" and finished the painting. I guess they did that so they could say they helped me, but I didn't need their help and I resented having done all the difficult work and then to have them mark my painting at the end so I couldn't say I did it all myself, well that was the last straw! After that the only lessons I had were in high school where the teachers didn't mess with my work. Most of what I learned came from experimenting and also reading how to books from the Public Library.

Mom also encouraged my music by letting me have guitar lessons when I was 15. I wanted piano lessons but we couldn't afford a piano. My first teacher was a young college student and he was very good. But it was in the sixties and he got busted for drugs. (Probably just grass). The next teacher was terrible so I dropped him and learned on my own.

Those experiences are probably why I am a good teacher. I had negative examples to show me how not to teach.

I am good at representational art (no digital picts to show you though), performing (music and acting) and writing lyrics, poetry, essays, plays and composing music.

My daughter is a very good flute player and can't live without music. She is good at 3D art. Both my sons are gifted artists and also enjoy music.

My grand daughter (3 years old in November) is very musical and excellent in language and she loves to draw. When she was very tiny, she was able to recognize some songs which she liked and would kick her arms and legs like crazy to let us know. She even tried to sing them. She couldn't do the pitch but she got the rhythm right. I was amazed.

I don't think she was quite two, when she drew a large elephant on my wall. It's obviously a toddler drawing but it was easy to see that it was an elephant even before she told us it was. (She loves them.) We left it up. LOL. We are looking forward to seeing how far her tendencies will develop.