The Most Creative Thing You Can Do Is Look Again
True creativity comes not from chasing novelty, but from applying fresh curiosity to everyday routines.
Creative insights occur when shifting from automatic System 1 filtering to deliberate System 2 questioning.
Taking a second look reframed cheap plastic keepsakes into artifacts of human desire, identity, and memory.
I traveled to Venice hoping for fresh inspiration. When I returned, I realised I didn’t need to find something new. I just needed to view familiar things in a new way.
I visit Venice often. This summer, on my first day, I hurried past the tourists and rows of gaudy souvenir stalls stuffed with plastic trash. I was going to authentic Venice, the Ca’ Pesaro, International Gallery of Modern Art, to see the Hernan Bas exhibition.
I used to think portraiture was an old genre with nothing new to offer. Bas changed my mind. His paintings show tourists in front of the same cheap souvenirs I had just ignored. For Bas, plastic gondolas and flashy........
