Lesson 4 Spark Your Creativity
Seeing the Extraordinary in the Ordinary
____. When you hear this word, what instantly pops into your mind?
You may think it is a quality that only artists and writers possess— some special talent you are ____ born with or without.
Many people accept the idea that we can be divided into two groups: those who are ____ and those who are not.
This ____ belief, however, is far from the truth.
Everyone has the ability to be ____.
Finding creativity ____ yourself just takes a little effort.
Some artists, for example, spark their creativity by looking closely at ordinary ____.
They try to discover the beauty hidden within these common objects and then turn them into ____ of art.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Look at ____ two paintings.
Believe it or not, they both depict the same person, Holy ____ Emperor Rudolf II.
The one on the left might look familiar, as it is a standard style of portrait that you would see in a gallery or an ____ book.
However, the one on the right, ____ Vertumnus, is very unconventional.
Created by a 16th-century Italian painter named Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the painting shows striking ____ and originality.
Fruits, flowers, and vegetables are arranged like the pieces of a puzzle to create a ____ head.
A cherry and a mulberry ____ the dark eyes, while an apple and a peach act as the pink cheeks.
This painting is representative of the artist’s signature style of “____ portraits.”
He used plants, ____, and other objects to create many other portraits like this.
Another good example of Arcimboldo’s unique creativity can be ____ in The Gardener, one of his “reversible” paintings.
When viewed normally, it is just an ordinary still life of ____ in a bowl.
However, when flipped upside down, it is ____ transformed into a smiling face!
Experts have studied this painting, along with Arcimboldo’s ____ reversible ones.
Their research showed that he first painted them as still life paintings and then turned ____ upside down and made some adjustments to create faces.
X-ray examination revealed that he sometimes changed the positions of some of the fruits and ____.
Why did he make his ____ reversible?
It was probably because he wanted to add an interactive ____ to his work by doing so.
Viewers feel as if they are playing a visual game, which brings ____ a sense of pleasure.
Each of Arcimboldo’s works is a careful ____ of everyday objects.
____ he looked at typical objects, such as a bowl of vegetables, he saw the artistic and imaginative potential in them.
His innovative approach to art inspired many great artists who came ____ him, including Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and René Magritte.
Helga Stentzel
Take a ____ at this picture.
Do you see a horse standing in a ____?
Or is it simply a collection of clothes ____ on a clothesline?
This ____ and amusing creation is actually a work of art created by the visual artist Helga Stentzel.
Using everyday items, she creates playful visual illusions that force you to look twice in order to confirm what you ____ just seen.
Her unique style has been called “household ____.”
Stentzel is perhaps best known for her ____ Animals series.
She got inspiration for the series ____ she was hanging her laundry.
By simply adding some colorful clothespins and a dish towel, she was ____ to transform her black sweatshirt and dark grey pants into a horse.
Other creations followed, including a ____ cow standing on some hills and a zebra crossing the desert.
All of these works were ____ from nothing more than laundry and household items.
Another series that highlights Stentzel’s astonishing creativity is ____ Creatures.
For this series, she arranges food items you can find in ____ kitchen to create cute animals.
The stars of the series are Brad Pet and Crunchie, a ____ of puppies made of sliced bread and lettuce respectively.
Stentzel says she came up with the concept of Crunchie ____ putting together a salad for her family.
What do you think her ____ is?
Stentzel says that it is her ____ observation skills that allow her to make magic out of the ordinary.
As a child, she would spend ____ staring at the patterns in the wood of her bed, trying to find different animal shapes.
She ____ that even today she stares at things longer than is acceptable in society.
This keen observation is ____ enables her to continuously produce creative and imaginative works of art.
Creativity is not some kind of ____ skill that belongs to exclusive groups of people.
It is actually a part of our ____ lives, a power that we can display anytime we choose to.
Whether we realize it or ____, we are constantly using our creativity to adapt, adjust, and rearrange the things around us.
By doing so, we are ____ the ordinary into something extraordinary—something that has never been seen before.
Take a look at the things around you, but ____ just give them a quick glance.
Look carefully, and ____ might discover something that sparks your own imagination and creativity.