Aaron McKenzie Featured in Canvas Rebel

I was recently featured in Canvas Rebel as part of their interview series. A snippet is below (read the rest here):

I often hear people say, “Oh, I’m not creative” just because they’re not writers or poets or photographers, as though daily life isn’t itself a series of creative decisions. Laying out the plumbing for a new house isn’t creative? Figuring out a better way to teach math to seven-year-olds isn’t creative? Working up a menu for a dinner party isn’t creative? If you’re putting something new into the world that wasn’t there before, or using your wits to solve a problem – especially if it’s not in some paint-by-numbers way – you are, by definition, creating. You might even be an artist and didn’t even know it.

Speaking only for myself, I doubt that being an “artist” gives me any unique insight into the world above and beyond simply being me. Each and every human is shaped by a singular collection of experiences, interests, aspirations, and fears, and I hesitate to divide the world into “creatives” and “non-creatives.” One difference I might point to, however, is this: I try to take my fears and emotions and foibles and process them via my creative work. Not every artist does this, but I don’t know many non-artists who do it.

Ever since our earliest ancestors came down out of the trees and onto the savannah of East Africa, we’ve been coming up with creative solutions to this challenge of being human. We’re a fundamentally creative species, living in a world that requires improvisation and real-time adaptation to ever-changing circumstances. Once in a while, one of us manages to design the cathedral at Chartres or paint “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” but all of us, every day, are performing countless creative acts without even stopping to realize it.