I woke up this morning and noticed an amazing sunrise in our backyard. While snapping a few photos, I began to think about the artistic and creative process. I began to think about the order of created things, and the joy of creativity. Our God is continually creative, and we are invited to share in His creative purpose. He stimulates the gifts of creative vision and inventive skill with us.

I believe that artistic creativity is a view of the world, of the arts, of human emotions, which sees beneath the surface, or rearranges components of these into novel or beautiful forms. Truly creative people can get in touch with the ‘pre-civilized’ self, the world of the child. Freud believed the artist was able to reach into the ‘preconscious’, to examine our own psychic processes and then transform these elemental forces into the world of art. Art provides a path from fantasy to reality. Many creative people, particularly in painting and music, have preserved a childlike ability to have contact with the whole self, with the unconscious, the very deep parts of the personality that most of us lose touch with as we grow up and get ‘civilized’. I pray I don’t lose my childlike wonderment.