Tahoe Activist Artists Fight Back

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Art Activism, artist as brand, artists, artwork, digital painting, drawing, illustrators journal, innovation

I had the pleasure of talking to Shelley Kentner yesterday, a fine artist whose work is clearly steeped into the classic form as embodied by DaVinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and others.

Shelley and other artists living in Northern California’s winter paradise, Lake Tahoe, CA have banded together to show their resistance artistically to the current government’s policies as personified by Donald Trump. The Illustrators Journal’s Gregg Masters was at a recent meeting of the creative group and was inspired and encouraged by this tiny faction of brilliant people who are taking on the powers that be they only way they know how to do it. Through their ART.

Both Gregg and I are looking forward to working with Shelley and the group and look for our up coming coverage of Shelley and the Tahoe Activists Artist Group in the Winter Edition of the Illustrators Journal

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1950's, 1960's, artist as brand, digital painting, drawing, illustration, illustrators journal, innovation, levinland, Norman Rockwell

Sometimes you come across information that stops you in your tracks. Such it is with this story about Mac Conner. He is one of the pillars of the modern world of illustration and deserves to be recognized. Here’s some video and a story from Newsworks.

McCauley “Mac” Conner worked as an illustrator during Madison Avenue’s 1950’s heyday, drawing pictures for both advertising and book covers from to romance and crime fiction.

If you’re familiar with HBO’s depiction of the world of advertising ‘Mad Men,’ then you know the era and culture Conner worked in. “Mac Conner was an original mad man in the sense that he worked in advertising and also in illustrations for magazine fiction,” said Mary Holahan, curator of illustration for the Delaware Art Museum.

But don’t call Mac Conner a commercial artist though. “I never liked the word commercial art, I was an illustrator.”

He always drew for a commercial, realist point of view. “My point of view was the way I lived, I never went in for crazy hats and stuff.”

Norman Rockwell was a big influence on his work. “Inspired by his sense of humor and plus his painting of course, he was a great painter.”

Like Rockwell, Mac even landed his work on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. But his work goes far and beyond that milestone.

The exhibit on display in Wilmington covers not just his advertising work, but also his fiction work. The work itself has an almost photographic quality to it. My favorite works were the crime noir illustrations. From the colors to the composition of the pieces these works really jumped out at me.

In fact, color was one of Mac’s trademarks. “Colors are probably the things that attract people the most. It’s very dramatic, it was an important part of his design sense,” Holahan said.

Even more than the color for me was some of the things depicted in the illustrations, gunshots, blood trickling out of a wound, smoking. Yes smoking! Remember the days of flipping through a magazine and seeing people smoking? It was everywhere, billboards and television commercials, even TV shows. It was almost jarring to see the smoking in Mac’s work as I hadn’t seen it in that context since I was a boy.

If you are of a certain age you will definitely get that sense of nostalgia from Mac’s work, but they don’t seem dated. “When we look at them now, we recognize they are from another period, but the color and the composition and all the design elements comprise works of art that speak to us today,” Holahan said.

Wilmington, Delaware is of course the home of illustration through the work of Howard Pyle and his school atteneded by famous students like Frank Schoonover and N.C. Wyeth as well as others. That’s a big reason why the museum feels it is important to host an exhibit like this. “There are compelling reasons for people to value this work because its beautiful but also because its part of a historic tradition,” Holahan said.

This exhibit also afforded me the pleasure of getting to talk to Mac about his work and life. “Certainly its the first experience that I’ve had with an artist of this age whose looking back at work that he did such a long time ago,” Mary said.

For Mac, it’s a joy to see his work front and center for a new generation to view, “Its good to know its still around, it’s good for the ego of course.”

“I look around and see what you’ve accomplished over the years. I can’t even draw a line now, I can’t even draw a line and I look at this stuff and I say how the hell did that guy do it.”

I don’t know how Mac made this body of wonderful and beautiful work, I’m just glad he did, and that I got to experience it with him, if only for a little while.

Peter Fowler: Renaissance Artist

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artist as brand, digital media, digital painting, innovation, Peter Fowler

 

Really interesting video with Peter Fowler who has his hands in various artistic disciplines.

Are These Sands Crabs, Insects or Creatures From Outer Space: Does It Matter?

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beach, crabs, digital painting, illustration, illustrators journal, levinland, sand crabs

This painting is from a children’s book without a home yet. It’s called Emma and Digger. It started out as a sand crab adventure story, yet I fear that since Emma and Digger don’t exactly look like sand crabs that perhaps they should just be little beach creatures and call it a day. I’ve gotten feedback that these are insects or sand crabs don’t look like that.

If you’re working on your own projects I’m sure this has happened to you. You get excited about the work and suddenly after the fact you realize you’ve done something that doesn’t make sense…or does it?

I think sometimes people cannot let go of what their perceptions are to see the bigger picture. Here it’s about losing family and friends and creating your own life and completing the cycle. Not about whether Emma and Digger are sand crabs, insects or from outer space. Thoughts??

End of the Week and What Have You Done?

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artist as brand, Caroline L. Arnold, Darren Hardy, digital painting, drawing, illustrators journal, Levinland studio, lon levin

This is what I worked on this week. It’s an illustration from my upcoming book about imagination.It’s not done but it’s close enough to show. It started as a sketch of three kids modeled after my daughter’s kids and blossomed into what it is now.

I ask the question of you like I ask the question of myself. What have I done this week, this day, etc Most of the time we are on auto-pilot and don’t think too much about what we’re doing. We have house chores, bills to pay, assignments to complete, kids to take care of etc. The thought of having another goal or task is overwhelming, especially a personal goal. So those goals like I’m gonna write a children’s book or create a painting seems like it can wait.However taking it in small does you can accomplish a lot. That’s how I approached this art and all the other projects I set for myself.

If this resonates with you you may want to read “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy or Small Move Big Change by Caroline Arnold.

Keep up the good work, watch for the Spring Edition of the Journal and much more to come!

Embrace the Beast!

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action sports, artist as brand, athletes, creativity in art, digital media, digital painting, drawing, illustration, illustrators journal, social media

 

“The most enriching rewards for creative endeavor are intrinsic; that is, the reward is in the pleasure the creator takes in doing the work itself, and in achieving the result, and not from the pay or the prize.”  – Jane Piirto

Monday Morning is here again and here’s some food for thought to start your day. If you’re creative and you enjoy doing whatever fuels the creativity do it. Don’t worry about how good you are or whether you’ll get rewarded for your work. That is not the point. It’s taken me a long time to realize I am driven to create. Though I’ve tried to suppress this urge and do things that are “more practical” in terms of making a living or creating wealth, I cannot hide from the fact I need to create. So I embrace the beast. I don’t try and tame it, rather I am riding it and enjoying the journey.

 

Professor Jane Piirto, in her book Creativity for 21st Century Skills covers the motivation to create.

She writes, “The main cause for creativity is that the creative person wants to be creative, in whatever domain he or she is working – whether it be woodworking in the basement, dancing, acting, drawing, singing, doing science, mathematics, inventing, being an entrepreneur, being an athlete, cooking, sewing, building, designing.

“People who are creative must have motivation. Creators intend to be creative, to make—something. People have to want to be creative. Creativity takes a long time and a certain amount of obsession.”

She thinks “Motivation is the only and main personality attribute that all creative people have and need.”

If you relate to this you are part of the tribe, so stop judging yourself so harshly and take comfort in the thought that millions of creative people all over the world are in the same boat. Piirto notes, “Creators must have the talent necessary to create in their area, and have had the environmental influence and support necessary.” 

I’m sure most creatives feel this way. The way to get there is to day by day practice your craft and seek support from those who can relate to what you’re doing. IT DOES NO GOOD AND IT’S TOXIC FOR YOUR SOUL TO SEEK APPROVAL FROM THOSE WHO DON’T GET IT!

“What are the rewards for being creative? Fame is not usually one of them.” Piirto quotes musician Mat Callahan: “I have never found any correlation between money and the effectiveness of the creative process and its results. Do I produce a demand for my creative work… do I produce marketable commodities? Maybe. Do I apply my energies to my creative work, regardless? Certainly. Continuously. Why? Because of the satisfaction I derive from the process itself and the pleasure it brings to others.”

I leave you with that. The results of your mindset, your talent and your work will dictate the outcome. Focus on the work and being the best you can. Embrace the beast, take it for a long ride and enjoy the journey.

 

My Phone Call With A Giant!

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artist as brand, digital media, digital painting, drawing, illustration, illustrators journal, Kinuko Y Craft, levinland, Mark Stamaty, Molly Crabtree, social media

Illustration by Kinuko Y. Craft for an article in Playboy Magazine, December of 1981 or 1982 “Liberty and Justice”

There are very few times in life you get a chance to talk with a giant in your field of endeavor. The other night I got to do just that, I spoke with Kinuko Y. Craft, master illustrator and one of the few females to regularly get published in Playboy magazine during it’s heyday. Her work has also appeared in and on the cover of many magazines and in numerous picture books. Awards for her work are too numerous to name however it bears mentioning that she was voted in the NY Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 2008. And this quote by famed writer Ray Bradbury sums it up “Kinuko Craft is a Renaissance woman. By this I mean not that she paints like the Renaissance painters, but that she is an artist for all seasons, for all kinds of subjects, and in all kinds of styles. If you will survey her works, you will find little duplication in form, color or texture. She fits herself to her subject with charming ease and yet leaves herself free to remain herself. There is an air about all of her illustrations of one who is a true connoisseur of art, wide-ranging through all the countries of the world. One cannot help but think how delightful it would be to walk into gallery of her kaleidoscopic talents.”

The other night I was walking my dogs to the park and my phone rang. I picked it up and this girlish voice with a slight accent starts talking, introducing herself as Kinuko Craft. I was dumbfounded. We started our conversation and she told me she’d be happy to give me an interview for the upcoming issue of the Illustrators Journal. We spoke for about 10 minutes while my dogs did their business occasionally staring at me wondering why I wasn’t paying attention to them. How could I explain the joy I was having connecting with one of the illustration goddesses I admired. After a few minutes I told Kinuko I’d love to call her back and that my dogs were getting restless so I should pay attention to them. She laughed and told me how much she loved her dog and she understood.

Later that night I called her back and we had a delightful conversation for an hour and a half. The contents of that talk will appear in the next Journal coming out in April, so please come back and visit us, because we’re gonna start rockin n’ rollin’ with all sorts of great interviews and articles.

 

Next up…Political cartoonist Mark Stamaty whose work has appeared in too many magazines and publications to count especially his cover art for the Village Voice. We are also expecting original work done for us by Millenial superstar artist Molly Crabtree!

Should I Give Up Art?

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artist as brand, digital painting, drawing, illustration, innovation, Levinland studio

I ran across this posting and stopped. There have been a few times in my life and career that I asked myself this question. The first time I was in grade school and my father told me the only artists he knew were queer and was I queer. I actually had no idea what queer meant but I was sure it wasn’t good in his mind. I told him no I just like to draw and paint.

Off and on for years I doodled on my notebooks, on test papers and took painting classes with my mother. It wasn’t until my freshman year in college that I realized I wanted to be an artist. My athletic career had all but vanished from various injuries and I decided I needed to direct my energy towards being an artist regardless of whether my father thought I was “queer” or not!  Over the years off and on I gave up being an artist and became an art director, then a creative director and finally an art department head at a major Hollywood studio. After all I had to eat and take care of my kids. Then in 2006 I decided to pursue illustration and being an artist full-time. Since then I’ve illustrated 30 or so books, illustrated for magazines, licensing and packaging.I created an online daily cartoon and have produced and directed animation for children’s educational series.

And still I have my doubts…I haven’t reached my goal of being the best me I can be. I’m shooting for that hallowed ground that Dr Seuss and Maurice Sendak roam. So I say creating artwork has little to do with supporting yourself financially. It has to do with expressing yourself and meeting your goals artistically. So plow ahead and use your failures to strengthen your shortcomings. And most of all enjoy the process!

 

Here’s the posting that inspired this soft rant.

Art and Struggle: At what point should an artist ‘give up’?

by Brian Sherwin on 3/5/2013 11:54:30 AM

This article is by Brian Sherwin, regular contributing writer for FineArtViews. Brian Sherwin is an art critic, blogger, curator, artist and writer based near Chicago, Illinois. He has been published in Hi Fructose Magazine, Illinois Times, and other publications, and linked to by publications such as The Huffington Post, The Boston Globe, Juxtapoz Magazine, Deutsche Bank ArtMag, ARTLURKER, Myartspace, Blabbermouth, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Conservative Punk, Modern Art Obsession, Citizen LA, Shark Forum, Two Coats of Paint, Vandalog, COMPANY, artnet, WorldNetDaily (WND) and Art Fag City. Sherwin graduated from Illinois College (Jacksonville, Illinois) in 2003 — he studied art and psychology extensively. If you want your blog posts listed in the FineArtViews newsletter with the possibility of being republished to our 22,000+ subscribers, consider blogging with FASO Artist Websites.  Disclaimer: This author’s views are entirely his/her own and may not reflect the views of BoldBrush, Inc.. You should submit an article and share your views as a guest author by clicking here.

I was recently asked the following question: “At what point should an artist ‘give up’?“. The artist who asked the question stressed that he was tired of ‘struggling for nothing’. I asked him to explain what ‘struggling for nothing’ meant — he responded by offering a rant that began with his lack of art awards, and ended with his frustration over his poor sales history. I reminded him that art and struggle walk hand-in-hand… and that the factors he mentioned were not good reasons for ‘giving up’ as an artist.

 

The artist avoided my response. He continued to explain how he was ‘giving up’ due to lack of recognition. I assume that he expected a ‘pity party’ from me in his honor. He was not aware that I’m a horrible ‘pity party’ host. I handed out all of my tissues years ago… and my smallest violin has gathered dust in a state of disrepair. Point-blank, I refused to validate his perceived failures as reasons to ‘give up’ on his artwork.

 

In truth, he did not want my honest answer to his question… he wanted me to offer him an ‘out’. He wanted me to agree that it was time for him to ‘give up’ on his artwork — and all the years he had put into exploring art in general. I don’t agree with ‘giving up’. I told him that he was missing the point of creating art in the first place. I told him that he needed to rediscover his passion… the passion he had known long before the art competitions and unsold artwork.

 

Art and struggle walk hand-in-hand. The technical side of creating art can be frustrating at times (many FineArtViews regulars have shared the technical difficulties they have faced as artists). Furthermore, there are emotional factors to consider depending on the artist and the visual message that he or she explores (some artists open emotional wounds, if you will, as part of their creative process). These struggles — including the struggles involved with marketing art — are not reasons to ‘give up’… they are reasons to press on. Passion holds it all together.

 

Art and struggle walk hand-in-hand. As implied above, the process of creating art — and developing as an artist — may not always be pleasant. Furthermore, it does not always result in praise. Even when praise is achieved… it is often fleeting. The need for recognition is a sad reason for entering the world of art marketing IF passion is lost in the process. It is OK to desire recognition (seek fame and fortune if you wish)… BUT upholding ones passion for creating and sharing a visual message is far more desirable. I feel that my artist friend should prioritize his needs.

 

This is what I want to stress: Lack of recognition — be it in the form of failing to win an art prize OR failing to sell a piece — is not a reason to ‘give up’ as an artist. It is not a valid reason for tossing your passion aside. Lack of recognition is a common struggle faced by artists and other creative individuals. Point-blank, my artist friend is not the first artist to face these struggles… nor will he be the last. He needs to stop whining. He needs to toughen up… and get back to work. He won’t receive pity from me… only pressure.

 

In closing, artists will often find themselves in the position of facing struggles head-on. Art and struggle walk hand-in-hand. Veterans of the art world can no doubt tell you about some of the ‘brick walls’ they have smacked over the decades. That said, most of you WILL keep pushing forward… just as they did. Stating that you are ‘giving up’ because of lack of recognition is nothing more than a petty excuse for having lost your passion. Rediscover your passion. After all, recognition is a trivial need compared to the passion that should be fueling your artwork in the first place.

 

Take care, Stay true,

 

Brian Sherwin

Important Ink and Brush Drawing by Henri Matisse: On Sale

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artist as brand, digital painting, drawing, illustrators journal, matisse, painter

If I only had the money…Matisse is one of the truly original artists ever and one of the pillars in my art pantheon. Just to gaze at his work and study the movement of his lines and how sure and spontaneous they are is an inspiration.

An important ink and brush drawing by Henri Matisse will be offered in the forthcoming Œuvres sur Papier sale on 23 March in Paris. Considered to be one of the finest examples of the artist’s last works on paper, Visage will appear at auction for the first time, having been in a private collection since its acquisition from the family of the artist in 1976. Drawing was always central to the artist’s oeuvre, and whether working in oil paint, ink or collage, his exploration and representation of form needed very few marks to convey a powerful image. Characterised by calligraphic brushstrokes, the image bears the hallmarks of Matisse’s assured brevity of line. As his daughter Marguerite Duthuit mentions in the certificate of authenticity, this work “…belongs to the group of the very last drawings by Henri Matisse.”

HENRI MATISSE, VISAGE, 1952. ESTIMATE: €800,000—1,200,000. © 2017 SUCCESSION H. MATISSE.

In fact, by the latter half on the 1940s, the artist had largely abandoned painting because of the physical toll it begun to take. During this period, he has taken up residence at the Hôtel Régina in Nice, where he spent long periods bedridden, yet still compelled to make work. He turned his attentions to working with paper using different mediums, and most famously his colourful cut-outs. Many of these pieces were produced with the help of his studio assistants Lydia Delectorskaya and Jacqueline Duhême, who alongside offering practical support, sometimes posed for Matisse – becoming the subject of some of his most iconic portraits.

VISAGE HANGING IN THE DINING ROOM OF MATISSE’S ROOM IN THE HÔTEL RÉGINA, NICE, 1952. © 2017 SUCCESSION H. MATISSE.

Visage hung on the walls of the hotel room Matisse called home for several years. This elegant large-scale drawing – thickly brushed in India ink – demonstrates his innate ability to capture the nuances of facial expression with a few strokes.  The viewer’s eye is drawn immediately to the centre of the paper, locked into a confident gaze, accompanied by a wry smile. Visage is a testament to his long-standing fascination with the very act of drawing – stripped back to its purest form.  As the art historian Pierre  Schneider points out, the brush drawings of this period are in fact interchangeable with the paintings of the same name: “which only goes to prove they have the same identity. These large dazzling black and white sheets of paper are Matisse’s last paintings” (Pierre Schneider, Matisse, New York, 1984, pp. 652-654).

HENRI MATISSE, GRAND VISAGE (MASQUE), 1952. © 2017 SUCCESSION H. MATISSE.

A photograph by Lydia Delectorskaya taken in the rooms of the Hôtel Régina in 1952 shows Visage hung high in the top corner of Matisse’s living room, above a frieze of paper cut-outs. On the subject of the 1950s ink and brush portraits, Matisse himself wrote: “These drawings spring up in one piece, made of elements without any apparent link with the analytic thought which preceded them. The multiplicity of feelings expressed in each of them seems impossible to capture so much the speed. ith which they join together is great. I am absolutely convinced that they represent the goal of my curiosity.”

 

MAIN IMAGE: HENRI MATISSE, VISAGE, 1952. ESTIMATE: €800,000—1,200,000.

The Dream Canvas: ARE DREAMS A MUSE TO THE CREATIVE?

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artist as brand, Carl Yung, digital painting, dreaming, illustration, innovation, Sigmund Freud, social media

My dreams are very detailed. In fact I can create imagery in my dreams I could only…well dream of creating in real life. Recently I had a dream where I created the most detailed and complicated storyboard with a black leaded pencil. Each frame was a masterpiece.

There’s no limit to my creative abilities when I’m sleeping. But when I’m awake, that’s a different story. A lot of factors come into play, my ego, my fears my hand to eye abilities my command of mediums. A while back I decided to try to tap into my subconscious without going to sleep. The way I did that was to start squiggling around with a pencil on a pad of paper doing absolutely nothing to guide the imagery. Lightly I traversed the surface until I had scads of crisscrossing lines. Then I took a sharper mechanical pencil and started to “pick out” imagery in the scribbles in front of me without thinking what it was, trying to let the form appear. Once I saw an image start to form I went with it and started detailing without worrying whether the images made sense or were correct in it’s depiction of faces, anatomy etc. What you see here is the product of that process. 

The article below explains and rebukes some of my personal feelings about my own connection to “dreamlike” imagery. But it draws a fascinating picture of creative minds. I remember reading Yung many years ago and he  believed you could find control in your dreams and gave some practical exercises by looking at your hands in the dream so that you could better control and understand your dreams. I have at times been able to do this and I know that my dreams have produced some amazing creative thoughts and visions that were the root of some of my best work. So read on.

 

By TORI DeANGELIS

Popular literature abounds with examples of famous people who have used dreams to aid their creations. Billy Joel reports dreaming the music to his pop tunes in orchestral form, novelist Stephen King turned a recurring childhood nightmare into the book “Salem’s Lot,” and Salvador Dali was so obsessed with the creative potential of dreams that he deliberately fell asleep with a spoon in his hand. When he nodded off, the spoon would clatter to the ground and wake him up, providing fresh dream images for his surrealistic paintings.

But from a scientific perspective, there is scant evidence to connect these compelling areas. While recent neuroimaging studies have examined the brain regions responsible for dreaming, for example, parallel research on dreams and the brain in the throes of creation is not yet under way.

That said, intriguing new work suggests possible links between dreams and creativity. Aside from indicating that dreams may help ordinary people find creative solutions to everyday problems (see page 48), recent research shows that fantasy-prone people may have higher dream recall than others. It also suggests that dreams themselves–with their idiosyncratic imagery, colorful extrapolations on the same theme and nonjudgmental stance–model at least one aspect of the creative process, the free association that precedes actual creation.

“To be creative, you need a way to let those circuits float free and really be open to alternatives that you would normally overlook,” explains Robert Stickgold, PhD, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard University who has conducted seminal studies on dreams, sleeping and learning. “Several features of REM sleep predispose the brain to this activity.”

A dream-prone personality?

It may be the case that people who use dreams for creative purposes naturally have greater access to the dream world than others, research suggests. Two streams of literature support this contention: One links specific personality characteristics such as openness, proneness to fantasy and schizotypic tendencies with the penchant to remember and report dreams; the other connects creativity and these same personality variables.

Findings reported in the May issue of Personality and Individual Differences (Vol. 34, No. 7) strengthen the association. In one of the longest and most comprehensive studies on dream recall and personality factors to date, University of Iowa psychologist David Watson, PhD, collected dream-recall reports from 193 undergraduate students every day for three months, as well as data on personality variables, sleep schedules and the students’ alcohol and caffeine intake.

Personality characteristics were by far the most significant factor in dream recall, says Watson. Those prone to absorption, imagination and fantasy were much more likely than others to say they remembered their dreams and to report dreams with vivid imagery, he found. The same group also scored higher than others on the “openness” scale of the five-factor personality inventory. The scale describes those who are open to new experiences and take a rich, complex approach to life–“the ‘art film’ circuit,” as Watson puts it.

Watson, an empiricist, says that he was surprised by the finding. “I actually thought dream recall was going to be related to stress and anxiety, because the literature indicates that the things that disturb sleep tend to promote dream recall,” he says. Instead, his data support the idea that there’s a type of person more likely to tune into their dreams than others, he notes.

A related study in the September Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 85, No. 3) by psychologist Shelley Carson, PhD, a lecturer at Harvard University, found that 182 Harvard undergraduates who scored high on creative achievement tests also tested lower on “latent inhibition,” the ability to filter out internal and external stimuli that aren’t relevant to current goals or survival. The study is the first to directly test the association between creativity and low latent inhibition, which also has been linked to mental disorders such as schizophrenia, schizotypal personality disorder and proneness to psychosis.

The findings suggest that creative people may naturally “take in” more extraneous material than others, including, possibly, their dream material, Carson notes. There may well be biological underpinnings to these tendencies–possibly related to the mesolimbic-dopamine system–which she and others will likely explore in the future, she notes.

Dreaming resembles creativity

There may be a good metaphorical reason that artists are so attached to their dreams. In the broadest sense, dreams mimic a critical stage of creativity: brainstorming the range of possibilities, or what psychoanalysts call free association, says Harvard’s Stickgold.

Neuroimaging studies by neurologist Allen R. Braun, MD, of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, neuropsychologist Mark L. Solms, PhD, of St. Bartholomew’s and the Royal London Hospital, and others show how this might happen. In essence, the brain areas responsible for executive control, logical decision-making and focused attention shut down during dreaming, while sensory and emotional areas come alive. In addition, short-term memory functions are deactivated, so that the emotional content of images remains, but the waking context does not.

At least one study by Stickgold supports the idea. In 1999 research reported in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience(Vol. 11, No. 2), Stickgold and colleagues woke 44 undergraduate students from REM sleep–the deepest stage of sleep most strongly associated with dreaming–and immediately gave them a word-priming task. Subjects were shown a word, and immediately after, another word or cluster of nonsense letters. Subjects were then asked to say if the second item was a word or not.

Previous studies of normally awake subjects showed that when the word pairs were strongly related–as with “wrong” and “right,” for example–subjects could identify the second target word faster than if the words weren’t strongly related–as with “wrong” and “house,” for example. But when they were tested immediately after being awakened from REM sleep, the exact opposite happened. The weaker primes produced faster responses.

“It’s as if the brain is preferentially searching out and activating weak associates, unexpected paths, instead of the obvious, normally strong associates,” Stickgold says.

This unique activity provides both a nice metaphor and a possible explanation for the way artists and other creative people operate: in essence, thinking outside the box, whether consciously or unconsciously, Stickgold comments.

“It is as if the [dreaming] brain has been tuned to a state for finding and testing and thinking about new associations,” Stickgold says. “To paraphrase Robert Frost, the brain takes the path less traveled by, and that makes all the difference.”

Tori DeAngelis is a writer in Syracuse, N.Y.