When someone says: Boring! –it is a one word sentence (usually uttered with both syllables drawn out in a singsong voice) that immediately dismisses whatever came before. From this perspective, saying that something is boring is a condemnation. Boredom is a state of mind to be avoided.

I am going to offer an alternate view for makers: boredom as a door into depth, insight and manifestation.

Let me skip first to the other word in the title of this piece: creativity. Being creative requires an open, playful and nonjudgmental attitude. An announcement of boredom quickly slams the door and tells us to move onto something else. How can something boring be creative? This is a closed state of mind, which is easily propped up by the many instant remedies we have to boredom– all the dinging and linking of our gadgets can fill a day without allowing a moment of boredom. We used to have to wait in line, or wait in traffic, or wait at the doctor's office, but now we have our gadgets to fill this space. And uninterrupted space and time is exactly what we need to get into a mood that will invite the muse.

John Cleese, the famous comedian, tells the story of another writer who he felt was more gifted than him, and quicker to come up with material. But what he noticed was that this adept writer stopped too soon. Once he came up with a solution, he got restless, and moved onto something else. John Cleese urged himself past his boredom, past the place of having no more ideas, into several more scenarios. In this way, he came up with more innovative material, and was more successful.

This is my experience: pick a subject and stick with it past the point that you have become weary of it. Aha! You find an insight that you wouldn't have if you did not persist. If you have ever made 100 drawings of the same thing, you will know what I mean. You are bored by the time you reach number 27. You wish you had chosen a different object. You have run out of ideas. But then come out the tools you haven't tried, the close-up view you hadn't noticed before, etc.

I did a study of pears when I was teaching at Naropa University, and took a class with Robert Spellman (inspirational artist and teacher: http:www.robertspellman.com). Here are just a couple of my sketches–