The Adjacent Possible Blog
Explore The Adjacent Possible, a foundational pillar for creativity on The Artist’s Journey. Insights into intersections of art, psychology and science.Sign up to get weekly Art & Creativity Blogs from Nancy Hillis
Enter your name & email to get updates in your inbox
Book Lover’s TV Interview: Nancy Hillis and The Artist’s Journey® Book
Book Lover's TV Interview: Nancy Hillis and The Artist's Journey® Book Daniel Hall interviews Dr. Nancy Hillis about her book: The Artist's Journey®: Bold Strokes To Spark Creativity on Book Lover's TV. You can see the interview by clicking on the arrow above. You can also visit Daniel Hall's YouTube Channel and watch it HERE. TRANSCRIPT: Welcome To Book Lover's TV 00:00:05 Why hello and a welcome to this very special interview that we have for you here at Book Lovers TV, w...
One To Zero: Fear, Risk & Creativity
We visit the dark side of Zero to One, going in the opposite direction. In creativity, there is the risk it won’t work out. Why are we so afraid of this? It turns out there are good and deep reasons to be afraid, but even better reasons to push through.
Simplicity, Complexity, and the Observer In Creativity
Simplicity, Complexity, and the Observer In Creativity We continue our journey of moving towards the idea of a sweet spot in artistic creativity, a balance between freedom and constraint. This sweet spot is informed by satisfiability, a strange and exotic subfield at the intersection of computer science and physics. This satisfiability displays a phase transition, something we hinted at previously but have not yet fully explained. This phase transition is related to complexity, a...
Art, Creativity & The Suspension Of Disbelief
Art, Creativity & The Suspension of Disbelief Have you ever watched a hokey science fiction film produced in the years before computer-generated imagery (CGI) and vast budgets? More often than not, an eye-rolling moment occurs when you see the wires the rocket ships are hanging from and the flames curling upwards on the screen giving off smoke, something that shouldn’t happen in zero gravity. Perhaps the shadow of a spaceship gets cast by the studio lights onto the cardboard...
The Artist’s Journey: Why Your Why Matters In Your Abstract Art
Why Your Why Matters To create your deepest work it’s important to become aware of the question of why your why matters in your art. What's your big ‘Why’ for creating? Why is creating important to you? What motivates you to paint? What does it mean to you? You could have many ‘whys’ or you could have a really big, juicy Why. Your Why will carry you through and past resistance, difficulties, and disappointments that inevitably arise in creating art or anything else for that matter. Your Why...
Tapping Into Your Creativity Interview
^ Click on the arrow above to watch the interview and demo Tapping Into Your Creativity Interview I was honored to be interviewed by Sandra Felemovicius on her Instagram LIVE: Tapping Into Your Creativity program for her philanthropic project to benefit Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger relief organization. You can see the interview by clicking the arrow on the video above. During this COVID 19 pandemic and quarantine, Sandra was inspired to take action...
Creativity & Art: What Is Good Enough?
Creativity & Art: What Is Good Enough? Am I good enough? What can mathematics teach us? In our last blog post we briefly discussed Herbert Simon, a remarkable Nobel Prize winning economist who came up with the idea (obvious in retrospect, like almost all good ideas) of ‘bounded rationality.’ What that means is that we are continually making decisions with limited information and limited ability to analyze that information. This seeming limitation on our decision making capability...
Creativity, The Adjacent Possible & Existential Yoga
Creativity, The Adjacent Possible & Existential Yoga What does creativity have to do with the adjacent possible and existential yoga? What does it have to do with economics and ecological systems for that matter? Is it possible to be too smart for your own good? Too smart to be creative, too smart to be prosperous, too smart to be happy? Shouldn’t it be the more, the better? To delve into this question, we start in the dusty halls of economic academia, though we will bust out...
Creativity & The Sweet Spot In Art & Science
Creativity & The Sweet Spot In Art & Science The following blog post is constructed from conversations between myself and my partner, Dr. Bruce Sawhill, Stanford educated theoretical physicist and mathematician. Once upon a time, we wrote a blog post about The Goldilocks Zone and how biological life and creativity both thrive in a sweet spot. Later, we wrote about the continuum between TV snow on one hand and the ticking of a metronome on the other exemplifying the spectrum between...
Invisible Forces & The Challenge Of Creativity
Invisible Forces & The Challenge Of Creativity The following blog post is constructed from conversations between myself and my partner, Dr. Bruce Sawhill, Stanford educated theoretical physicist and mathematician. When one hears the term force field, one tends to think of science fiction and spaceships, perhaps a device used by the jut-jawed captain of a gleaming starship to defend against the repugnant reptilian aliens who are seeking to enslave or eat the pure and righteous crew. But...
Creativity: Risk & Discovery
The following blog post is constructed from conversations between myself and my partner, Dr. Bruce Sawhill, Stanford educated theoretical physicist and mathematician. In last week’s blog post we reflected on the nature of luck and whether or not luck could be influenced or “engineered.” We came to the conclusion that luck and creativity had deep common underpinnings, namely their attitudes towards the unknown and the unknown unknown. In particular, it's important to: Treat the unknown...
Creativity, Luck & The Unknown Unknown
Creativity, Luck & The Unknown Unknown The following blog post is constructed from conversations between myself and my partner, Dr. Bruce Sawhill, Stanford educated theoretical physicist and mathematician. A week and a half ago, Bruce was swimming with two friends in the ocean here in Northern California, putting in thousands of yards (meters) through the chilly gray-green water. They usually swim in the pool, but since all of the pools are closed on account of COVID-19, they have been...
FREE WORKSHOP: The #1 Secret to Creating Authentic Abstract Paintings You Love!
You question your talent, and painting becomes arduous and painful. You feel lost, wanting to express yourself but not knowing how. But when you learn the #1 secret to creating authentic abstract paintings, it all changes. Finally, you're able to paint with joy and create art you love.
