Creativity Rules

Ter is an artist. I am a writer. In the days before we joined the ranks of the pension prisoner, we lived and breathed creativity. It happened spontaneously, with little warning. Inspiration was everywhere, in music, in books, in movies. She painted portraits of rock stars and I wrote about vampires who looked like rock stars. Her portfolio challenged my manuscripts for storage space in our basement apartment but still, we created. I learned to write by reading my favourite authors. Ter collected art magazines featuring articles by and about her favourite artists, and once in a while—more frequently then than now—we went to museum exhibits and local art shows. A portrait exhibit in Vancouver was particularly enjoyable; I got a bigger kick from watching her inspect the brush strokes in a Sophie Pemberton work than I did from seeing a Van Dyck of Charles I in the flesh.

My practice at an art show is to wander with an idle eye and wait for something to leap out at me. There are always things I like or will agree that’s nice, but a real sock in the belly is what determines whether or not I will part with cash. I am usually looking for something that impresses me as much or more than anything Ter has produced, and it’s rare that such a piece presents itself. Portraits of any ilk are few and far between. Portraits of her caliber are fewer still.

For that reason, I will always remember Sandra Jean. She hung amid florals and still lifes and seascapes and landscapes at a community art show in Sidney. I’d been strolling through the exhibit, scouting for anything that wasn’t a floral or a still life or a seascape or a landscape, and suddenly there she was: a woman with long dark hair and haunted green eyes gazing out of the frame and right through my heart. I stopped dead in front of her and forgot to breathe. I just stood and stared, transfixed. I would have her in my house today except that she was not for sale. The card named the painting and the artist, and there was the cursed red dot that meant I could only take the memory of her with me, because cameras were not allowed and I didn’t have mine with me anyway.

I showed her to Ter. Whether or not she shared my passion for the painting, she understood the nature of it. True art should incite an emotional response in the viewer, right?

So you’d think.

Ter was working at an art gallery/framing shop at the time. The girl she worked with was studying for her art degree and, as it happened, had framed Sandra Jean. The artist was the subject’s mother, and it turned out that she had captured a recent loss in her daughter’s life—I think a divorce but can’t recall for sure. As far as I was concerned, the artist nailed it to the wall, but all the framer had to say was how this was wrong and that should have been different and on the whole, the painting wasn’t that great.

If it wasn’t that great, why do I still remember it? Why did I want to buy it at the time? Why was I so dumbstruck by her beauty that I didn’t notice all the little things that were wrong? I guess if I’d brought my carpenter’s level and a plumb line, I might have seen that her neck was disproportionately long or whatever else the educated eye had plucked out, but all I cared for was how I felt when I met her sad, sad eyes.

The first rule of creativity is that creativity has no rules. Sandra Jean was proof. Follow the rules and you’ll end up with something that may impress the rule makers, but won’t likely impress me.