Creationlily : The Inspiration for Creationlily

A blank canvas is full of potential.
It opens up a spectrum of limitless possibilities,
and that is enlightening to me.

Photos from the score to my oratorio, The Last Days of King Saul
(I will feature the piece in a blog post of it's own).

Creative Impulses

Creativity can come in all sorts of forms and inspirations. I hope to share this with my children throughout their life, with music and art, being a form of expression and in reaching inner-peace. Growing up, I was involved in art, music and dance. Music eventually took to the forefront as my career and life-passion. I became a pianist, composer and music educator. Art was something that I continued to do for pure enjoyment. It became my downtime activity and enabled me to have boundary-free canvas for a creative platform.

We all see and perceive things differently.

How does creativity play into your life?

Above is a mask that I made a few years ago. I edited its photo with several effects to illustrate how we can look at the same object and view it with slight differences. One piece of art will speak differently to each one of us. We are all different, and we perceive things in different ways, even if we tend to agree on the same general idea. This especially speaks volumes with raising a six year old son that lives with autism and sees things naturally in a different light. My son Jake, has reinforced this idea for me of how everyone perceives things differently and learns differently. To me, this is the basic foundation to creativity and self expression. One image or a piece of music, can tell a story that holds a different meaning to its observer or listener.

Movement-Inspired Art

My love for dance intertwines itself in my music and art, by inspiring me to compose a piece of music or art that captures an element of movement. I often like to juxtapose the illusion of movement with still-life imagery. Some of my art creations are inspired by my music. I love to couple music with art by using musical imagery in the form of an abstract. I often think and write in an abstract way, and perhaps this is why I am so drawn to this genre.

Synesthesia

Through the years, art has weaved itself into my musical fabric in the form of synesthesia - the ability to associate colors with music. Due to my perfect pitch with piano and other instruments, since very early on, I associated colors with the white and black keys of the keyboard. I associate certain keys with colors and their various shades when I hear one pitch at a time, or if a piece of music is written in a certain key: For example, C -reds, D - oranges, E - pinks/purples, F - greens, G - blues, A - browns, B - yellows. Mozart had favorite keys that were meaningful to him, and I wonder if it may have been because of synesthesia. I often gravitate to composing music in some of my favorite keys: B minor - yellows, E flat minor - pinks/lavenders/purples, and C minor - reds.

Musical Imagery in Art / Visual Imagery in Music

Music evokes much imagery and movement for me, so I am connected intuitively to art and dance when I play the piano, and when I compose a piece of music. I often think of my fingers dancing on the keyboard while I play the piano, and how every movement I make is done for a specific purpose, such as getting a certain tone, or a certain type of articulation. I think about the release of my hands from the keys, and how it causes the follow-through to my arms to create a wave-like motion. It also reminds me of Tai-chi movements (the ancient discipline of Chinese meditative movements practiced as a system exercises) as well. I sometimes think of the sound of the ocean when releasing my hands off the keys and visualize the base, crest and downfall of the wave. I teach the visualization of the wave to my piano students when teaching how to release the hands off the keyboard. I incorporate visual imagery when playing and teaching music in order to achieve a particular sound, technique or effect. It helps me internalize what I am doing, enabling me to personalize the story that I am telling without the use of words.

Tapping into elements from art, music, dance and photography enables me to cross over and create in various genres, with a multitude of connections across the creative spectrum. I find myself alternating between music and art when I need a mental or emotional break from one or the other, as well as a way to decompress from other stresses. It is wonderful to be able to make this type of shift and to be able find a creative outlet at any time.

Travel and Creativity

My husband, Alex and I love to travel. Since we've had our three kids however, (our darling 3 year old boy/girl twins, Max and Miriam, and a wonderful 6 year old son, Jake) it's been harder to do. We try to take one trip away from the kids once a year to have some time to reconnect, see some new sites and get some much needed rest as well. Travel is one special means to creativity for several reasons. When we are taken out of our daily structure, are exposed to a new setting with new scenery, new cultural nuances, different foods, smells and a different language, it puts us in a perfect circumstance through this new experience, to see things differently than we normally would. It makes us have to adjust to big and little cultural differences. In doing so, we often have to abandon old rules and accept new ones. Having new sensory experiences provides us with new ways of viewing things. This enables us to find new paths to creativity, just by changing our perception a little bit. My favorite thing to take home as souvenirs from a trip are masks and art. For me, masks are the embodiment of a culture. Taking home a piece of art, is like taking a piece of a country's heart back home with me. It is taking something very personal, that someone had created as a precious gift for its future possessor.