“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams

I was listening as Dave was editing one of his live shows the other evening and heard a question come up about how to define creativity. Creativity has always been something hard to nail down in my opinion. It’s subjective and too often a personal perspective, yet it is the key measurement by which all work is judged.

I’ve struggled with the concept of creativity and how to describe it for some time. As a fine art gallery owner for a number of years, finding pieces that had the ‘wow factor’ was always a challenge. I needed exceptional pieces in the gallery to keep the high-end collectors interested and the doors open. Selecting work for the gallery was more art than science. I always hated to turn down an artist or photographer because their work wasn’t creative enough. I toiled with how to let them down without hurting their feelings, only to realize that I was doing them a disservice to send them out without trying to explain why their work wasn’t measuring up.

I began watching collectors and studying their behavior in an effort to better define creativity. What I found was that no matter the genre, great work was like a magnet drawing people in. It didn’t matter whether they collected photography, abstract paintings or bronze sculptures; a collector would glance around the room, spot a piece that ‘spoke to them’ and immediately move to get a closer view. Read More→