somewhat surprised any Aspies are good at creating arts

Post Reply New Topic

I used to believe that making art would be half my destiny. I really enjoyed drawing when I was younger, and I'd also enjoy writing poetry and stories. Ever since my late teenage years, I've slowly lost confidence in my creative abilities, which is related to my fear of failure. I came to the belief that I lacked any kind of imagination.

Sporadically, the need to make art returns... I was infinitely happy drawing when I was in Berlin a year and a half ago, but the experience was a fleeting one.

To be honest, I'm not at all surprised that many Aspies, myself included, show an aptitude toward creative fields such as music and visual arts. In my case, I primarily focus on visual arts-- mostly painting, but also drawing, sculpture, digital design, and 3-D computer modeling. I spent a large portion of my time in college cultivating a certain style, influenced both by my diagnosis and by Abstract Expressionism. When I really think about what motivates me to produce visual work, it's actually not too hard to see why many Aspies would gravitate toward art. Most of us lack the apparatus for social self-expression which NTs have; it can be very difficult, or even impossible, to communicate with others using their language of semiotic signals, because it's a language which requires a certain amount of natural intuition, and one in which we aren't inherently fluent. When we try to speak it, it has a tendency to come out more like a broken language-- for example, those really awful English translations from Japanese-- and it gives us away as not being native speakers of it. So, when faced with a decreased ability or inability to fully communicate with others directly through conversational dialogue and body language, we develop alternative modes of self-expression. In many cases, there is so much going on inside the mind of an Aspie, that it eventually has to spill out into the external world in some form, and generally the easiest way to do that is to pick up a pencil or a paintbrush or a guitar (or some other implement of creation). Art has the advantage of being a skill one can largely learn and practice on one's own; to practice social skills, one has to actually interface with other people a great deal. The cultural notion that the West has developed, about artists having license to be eccentric, is a bonus-- it's not a bad fit for those of us who, say, obsess over certain things and have a difficult time being around other people all the time.

I wouldn't say that people with ASDs are pragmatic in the usual sense. They're very pragmatic about how they organize their own lives.

I'm interested in language, music and art, but I struggle more with creating music and art than written texts.

I'm not a great fan of poetry. I do not understand Maths. I understand it as an abstract system like I understand music theory, but I do not see where it is coming from. With language I can tell what it is about.

I figure it's because illustration was one of my earliest obsessive tendencies, and I was a perfectionist about it.

Not all aspies are the same. Many of us seem to break down the stereotypical wall.

As an aspie who is an artist, I find myself wondering how many of us didn't get into our art til a little later in life. Until I was 13, I had no artistic aspirations. Since that time, I have written 5 novels (one is ready for production, so if anyone knows an agent that thinks an Aspie author would be awesome, send them my way.), produced over 20 short films (two of which have taken awards), and we're getting ready to shoot a 36 episode series...

It seems that the older I get, the more artistic I become.

I was pretty bad at drawing until fifth grade. I didn't write until I was 18.

So yeah, I guess being a late bloomer is quite common.

Music is incredibly mathematical. That said, I've had to admit that my lyrical content is very "matter of fact." I do use imagery, but it's almost always metaphorical. Metaphors of all kinds, and symbolism, to me are all pattern-like. Each metaphor or symbol is a pattern nearly identical to that which it represents. Patterns are mathematical.

My approach to songwriting is very pragmatic. I've been told by at least one critic to quit using "laundry lists" and event progressions so much. Sorry, can't help it. That's how my mind works, and sometimes it works pretty damned well according to quite a few people in the business themselves.

I don't worry about whether it's good. That's a critic's job. I like it, and I like doing it. Besides, I can't seem to stop myself from doing it anyway. So who cares?

Math, music, songwriting. They're all both art and science to me. Come to think of it, they are both art and science. Period.

I play the clarinet, write, and do visual art. I think the biggest advantage my Aspergers traits have given me towards these is my obsessive interest in them . . . I dedicate alot of time and work to improving at them.

Beyond this, I can work intelligently towards improving. I'm good at finding areas I can improve in, and figuring out ways to improve my skills in those areas. Plus I love to experiment, which is almost the same as being creative. I tend to experiment in ways that lead to good artistic results too.

I'm really interested in the subject of art too, so I do alot of my own theorizing on what art should be and try to bring that into what I do . . . so the obsessive interests really help me make good decisions in this sense too.

Lastly, I have a massive advantage next to most musicians because I have this freakish ability to sightread clarinet music. This comes from whatever natural knack I had, plus my obsessive interest in the clarinet from a young age. On weekends, I'd put all of my books of sheet music in a stack and just read through all of them. I was reading through the concertos I'm learning for my juries now in like, grades 9 and 10. But anyways, I'm good at recognizing visual patterns, and being mindful of lots of information I've learned while I play. So this helps me play musically.

I'm bad at improvising, and challenged by many elements of writing and drawing. But I work around those issues and I've also overcome alot of them through practice . . . I think people can get really good at most things if they dedicate time, work, and focus towards learning them.

You know, I was thinking about this earlier today. Aspies and creativity and all of that.

Since I've really been learning about AS, I've wondered just why exactly aspies need to have things spelled out more or less directly to us on the job. I'm a carpenter, and one thing that's been a sort of double-edged sword for me has been just how many questions I ask when I've been given a task to perform or something to build.

I understand that I seem to come off as not being knowledgeable or confident enough. But as I thought about it, I realized that the reason I ask so many questions regarding technique or specific details is that I find myself seeing a multitude of possibilities for any given task, regardless of what is considered to be "common sense" in a lot of situations.

So it's not that aspies can't be creative. It can just be a little overwhelming when you're seeing a few steps beyond where you need to be, especially with minute details. For this reason, a good healthy dose of convention and saying, "Ohhh, THIS is what everybody else does" can do you good if you're in my position, particularly when you're working.

That's exactly how I see it. I'm into science, numbers and art, always have been and they're very inter-connected, as far as I'm concerned (and the connection to music is very obvious to me too). I'm an amateur artist, specialising in landscapes (although I'm trying to diversify a little). Of course mathematics/ arithmetic comes into it. To get perspective and shadows right, you need to understand basic arithmetic and it helps if you're skills are a bit better than that. Then there's colour. What is colour? Science can explain it, down to the eye structure, how the brain interprets it, where light comes from, etc. Mathematics and science are visual to me. If I can visualise it or draw it, I can understand it.

My thing was always creative art, english and music - mostly percussion though. My dad also an aspie, much further along the spectrum than me and undiagnosed, dismissed all of my skills and interests because engineering and maths are 'mens' subjects and forced me down that route. I tended to want to please him, since being on the wrong side of him wasn't somewhere I wanted to be. I did pretty good in those subjects too, but I had to be forced and coached. I hated that.

Last edited by ZX_SpectrumDisorder on 29 Mar 2012, 8:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

^ I was co-erced into going down the science route, instead of the art route. My parents always said that art could be a hobby, but scientist was a real job. Big mistake and my parents realise that now and are actively encouraging my art these days. I'm determined not make the same mistakes with my daughter. She's only 6 just now and says she wants to be either a book illustrator or biologist (although she starts guitar lessons tomorrow, so who knows what might come of that). I'm happy, no matter what she does. She's got plenty of time to decide.

You sound just like me. I suck at visual art, but I am forcing myself to do some abstract kinds of things in Blender. I'm a clarinetist who just happens to know enough about piano to be dangerous (I got kicked out of piano class in college because I was too good at it and they needed the space for other students). At least you were coached in things you didn't like. I barely passed math and science classes, and I wasn't great at social studies, either. Band and English class were my places of refuge in school. I did ok in business courses, but I had a very old-school teacher and went to a private school with a tight budget. We typed on daisy-wheel typewriters and weren't allowed to use correction ribbon. We had to use paper ledger notebooks for accounting, no spreadsheets like Excel. I struggled with handwriting, so keeping accounting books was one of the more difficult things I had to do. I at least pulled a C out of that one, though. I gave senior year math an honest chance, but I could see after a day or two things weren't going to work out. I switched my elective to the "rocks for jocks" class (geology) for an easy A and sailed through my senior year. My handwriting was so pathetic, and we weren't allowed to type English papers, either. So I used my term papers as excuses to practice my calligraphy. I used to have a decent block-letter hand but was and am an abject failure at script. I might have hated the coaching, but I'd have enjoyed doing better in school if my parents had been willing to work with me. As a parent, I have a choice and won't let my own kids go through what I went through.

I'm coercing my son into learning piano, and he's 4. Will likely start his 3yo sister in a few short months. At the moment he hates it. But I look at it this way: I'm good at precious few things, and I hear all the time from people who say they wish they'd done this or that and that they wished that their parents had made them do whatever. I also have people tell me how talented they think I am and that they wish they could do the things I do. I feel as though I have very little to offer my kids--very little money, mostly hand-me-down clothes, tiny house to live in, etc. So in the few things I AM good at I really want my own kids to excel and be competitive.

What I didn't realize when I was just a kid is everyone I knew had so many things competing for their attention and so many people pushing them to work hard in those things, and those things were usually athletic sports. Since I didn't do those things, I had a LOT of spare time. When everyone was done with classwork and chatting or reading a book, I was programming tracks on a Yamaha QY10. When everyone else was faking doing homework in study hall, I was sneaking off to the piano room to work on a composition. Or if I could go to the band hall I'd practice clarinet for various honor band auditions and college scholarships.

What I've noticed with kids now is that they are all involved in so many after-school activities in which their parents are largely absent. Music is difficult, whereas it doesn't take as much brainpower or fine motor skills to run and throw a ball. So kids tend to complain and quit when music gets difficult and parents don't care enough to work with them. I realized that ultimately the same thing will likely happen to my own children, so it's imperative that I work with my children as much as possible while they do still have time. Starting this fall, my daughter will be in pre-k until 11:30 and my son in kindergarten until 2:30. My work hours are spread out through the day, which leaves me plenty of time to work with them on piano before they start getting pressured to do anything except music. And as long as they live with me they will have to keep up their musical studies whether it's fun or not.

I'd be disappointed if they ultimately decide not to make a career of music. But more important than being good at music is learning how to work hard to be good at something. Developing an analytical and critical mind together with a strong work ethic, personal initiative, and leadership ability are skills transferable to any discipline. More than just playing an instrument, I want to teach memorization, chord progressions, how to play by ear, how to improvise, songwriting, and composition--the last two being skills that require kids to work collaboratively with others--and jazz/pop/rock styles as well as classical. If I'm lucky enough to keep my kids on schedule, they'll know how to produce music with a DAW by 3rd grade. My son already helps me set up for band rehearsals at church, which just involves turning the sound system on and off--but that also exposes him to mixing consoles, microphones, and that sort of thing. And that's just routine for us. He's building skills that kids three times his age don't have, and he can read music better than words (which will improve as he gets into kindergarten...he's only 4, so cut him some slack!). So even if music isn't the direction he or his sister or brother go, he's still more than adequately prepared for whatever he wants to do in life, be it computers, medicine, law, auto mechanics, fast-food management, military service (which I think would be awesome), or owning a business. I'm just teaching these things because they are what I know and have saved my life on a few occasions.

Oh, well I actually had a nervous breakdown from being pressured. I was doing maths and science well beyond my peers in my age range. I'd often already know subjects in and out before they were taught at school. When the teachers said does anyon know what such and such is, I'd wind up at the board explaining it. That didn't do me any favours at all, it gave the bullys just an extra reason to torture me.
I wound up swearing revenge on my parents by drawing pictures all over my exam papers and walking out to get drunk. I didn't care that it would harm me by not achieving.

i think our unique art comes from the fact we are less infuences by society than most.