Leave Home (Steal Like an Artist 3/3)

At the beginning of Steal's chapter entitled "Leave Home," Jonah Lehrer is quoted, saying:

"Distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything"(93).

Kleon elaborates on this concept in agreement after:

"Your brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. You need to make it uncomfortable. You need to spend some time in another land, among people that do things differently than you. Travel makes the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder"(94).

I am in strong agreement with this, comparing my artwork pre-college to during-college. I honestly thought that I would never be able to leave Northern Virginia, having gotten emotionally attached to it over the past six years of life residing in one constant place, but when I moved to Newport News and started to experience expanded ideas on literature, art, and faith through my community and through my studies as an art major, my artwork started improving. It improved on a technical level, surely - but the greatest curve of improvement I noticed was that my art began to look more like something that I, Ellie, would create. My friends started remarking on how very "me" my artwork was, and how it was beginning to appear distinctive from the rest of the world's art. I strongly encourage any artist of any kind to leave, simply for the purpose of their art becoming more "them" than it was previously.