"You either are or aren't. You've either got it or you don't." This month, the Journal set out to debunk this and other myths about creativity—and to reveal the artist in each of us. Start by getting to the heart of art with Joni Overton-Jung. Then read what six other creative types told us about tapping into the divine source of all artistic endeavors: the one truly gifted hand.
Since my husband is a painter, new acquaintances often ask if I'm an artist, too. But while I certainly don't fit the traditional definition of an artist, I never feel completely honest saying no. For me, art has to do with inspiration on all levels—the inspiration it offers the audience, the inspiration that initially moves the artist to create, the source of that inspiration, which I think of as God. And so the degree that I'm open to that inspiration, that I'm appreciative of it and flexible to its demands, is the degree to which I find myself as an artist. That we all do.
Over the years, my appreciation of and love for art—and my participation in its various forms—have led me to see it as fundamentally spiritual. On the most basic level, this must be the case since Soul, one of the names Mary Baker Eddy used for God in her book Science and Health, conveys the idea that art and beauty and inspiration are inherent in the very nature of the Divine.
