What Makes a Creative Environment?
What Makes a Creative Environment?
February 24, 2011 by Taylor Studios
by: Phil El Rassi, Senior Graphic Designer
Recently, we were asked to fill out a survey on ways we can improve our working environment here at Taylor Studios. New furniture, carpeting, and freshly painted walls were among the suggestions. While a comfortable working environment is important to facilitate creativity, history has shown us that great work can be created under almost any circumstances. I remember my very first studio. I was maybe 10 years old when I decided to convert my tiny bedroom closet into a studio. I had enough room to stand up and turn around in, but it held my homemade drafting table and a milk-crate to sit on. Once my parents saw the large pile of clothes in the center of my bedroom, they made me turn it back into a closet, but it was a good studio while it lasted.
When Norman Rockwell launched his illustrious career, his first studio was a small attic room in a brothel. All afternoon a piano played in the parlor downstairs.
Rockwell later recalled, “a rough wooden stairway without railings led up to a trap door in the third floor ceiling.” There Rockwell painted in a room so small that whenever one of the prostitutes who lived downstairs wanted to come up to smoke a cigarette and chat, Rockwell had to move his easel so the trap door could open.
The famous painter Rene Magritte lived with his wife for 24 years in a cramped three room apartment in the industrial suburbs of Brussels. The only space for his easel was in their small dining room. There he painted most of his pictures that are now hanging in major museums around the world.
Even the great Michelangelo worked in a small space. For a while, he lived in a tiny room under San Lorenzo, where his charcoal sketches on the walls can be seen to this day. At one point in his career, Michaelangelo constructed a hat with wax candles on the brim so he could work in the dark. Guided only by those flickering candles, he made some of the most beautiful art in the history of the world. Irving Stone quoted Michelangelo as saying that a small room is better for working than a large one, because a small room focuses the mind.
Sometimes I think my own work would be better if I had big skylights with good northern exposure, or large surfaces to spread out on, or a larger monitor. Then I think again.
My current studio is small room with windows facing east and southward. It conveniently holds my easel, taboret, books, music stand, 2 guitars, and sometimes a few still life and taxidermy specimens. It’s a good studio and it gets plenty of natural light. Ms. Burkhardt, my life drawing professor in college, used to say that an artist only needs enough room to stand up and turn around in. I’ve always agreed with her.