Genius or Scenius?

Today, while driving down into the valley through the damp clouds, I listened to an interview by Geoff Goins with Austin Kleon (the author of ‘Steal Like An Artist’) which wided my view in the metaphorical sense. What I took away from it: first the sentence “There is no creation in isolation” combined with his view that there are no […]

What does he mean by this? In his view, there are no highly or less highly gifted people, but every creative person needs appropriate support from her environment in order to be able to do ‘good creative work’ or any creative work at all. Mozart or Beethoven were born into an appropriate environment. He calls this a ‘scene’, so he calls people who have this support a scenius instead of a genius. I found this thought quite exciting, because I often wondered why some people “just make it”, usually still with ease, and others get nowhere. Although they are not worse or less talented. Often even more. This could be at least one explanation.

Accordingly, I personally am neither a genius nor a scenius :-) – like probably most of us. However, lately I’m trying more and more to do only what brings me joy when doing creative things and not to look so much at the “perfect” result. That’s easier said than done, though. But I notice very clearly in the end result whether it was forced, so to speak, or whether it went easily from my hand full of joy. Forced work always has something stiff and lifeless about it, no matter how technically perfect it may be. I am therefore no longer surprised that artists who can paint technically perfect pictures suddenly want to paint like children again. How about you?