Everyone has a creative ability in some capacity. But I think the main difference is that an artist chooses a path to develop their capacity to create by a process of learning, trying, failure, learning, trying, failure, learning trying, moderate failure, until the process moves the needle more towards acceptable, moderate success, success or whatever. And the success/failure needle generally only gets moved based upon the artists perception of his/her own creation more than what other people think. In other words, artists care more about what they think about their own art than they do about what other people think about their art, even if they put their work in front of other eyes to critique it. That’s hard to explain to a person who has not taken that path. In other words, in art, failure is ok. Not only is it ok to fail...failure is actually a necessary part of the process. Sure. As an artist, you can say just about anything and it doesn’t matter if people like it, agree with it, or even care about it. It’s just nice when they do care, but it’s just part of the process.
The whole point is that the creation that didn’t exist before, exists now. And the artistic mind wants to improve upon it. And there’s a lot to that. Creative people are only more creative than other people because they are motivated to be creative. A person who creates does so because they want to create. It’s a very exploratory formation. For example, if you want to be a dentist, you study dentistry, you learn how to care for teeth. Then, you set up your practice or intern with another dentist and you learn how to imitate the techniques of the trade. You have to accept most of your formation/ education. There isn’t a lot of room for exploration on a daily basis because people’s teeth have a set number of problems to solve and a dentist has a set number of treatments.
Creative people explore more and accept less. They often raise more questions knowing that they don’t necessarily have the answers, and knowing that they may never have the answers. And most the time, they want to provoke thought, not claim to know the meaning of life, or the answers to life’s problems and social concerns. The point is to think about those problems and social concerns and perhaps use that information as part of an artistic endeavor or project which reflects the way they view the world, or what they wish to see in it, or maybe what they don't want to see...You see? Artistic people are used to failure, they usually see failure as part of the process rather than something to be afraid of.
It’s sort of like this, you put your art out there to get feedback, and the motivation isn’t necessarily to get praise or win a prize. Feedback is simply part of the learning curve, a chance to see your own work from another perspective, a shade that you didn’t see it in before. Or to see what kind of feelings or questions were raised by a person’s reaction to one’s work. Does that make sense?
And finally, being a creative person is really a mindset more than anything else. I don’t think a true artist wants to be like anyone else. An artist might learn their craft by emulating other people as part of the learning curve, but the goal is not be become that other person, or even be ‘like’ another person. An artist may look to other artists as inspiration, but the goal is to express himself/ herself through art.
