Do you think artistic talent is innate or do you think artistic talent can be nourished?

I believe that all of us possess artistic talent but it is stored in us in different ways.  A small number of people are able to reveal their artistic talent at a young age but most of us need more time, effort, and passion to unleash our hidden artistic talent.  A  study carried out by economist, David Galenson, seems to support my belief.

David Galenson researched the life of 42 contemporary American artists in the hope of unlocking the secret of innovation, which in turn may yield clues about how to foster fresh thinking in people and organizations.  He discovered that genius in art comes in two different forms, embodied by two different types of people.  He calls the first type of artists “conceptual innovators”.  Conceptualists know what they want and they know when they have created it.  They make bold and dramatic leaps in their disciplines and they do their breakthrough work when they are young.  David Galenson calls the second type of artists “experimental innovators”.  This type of artist proceed by a lifetime of trial and error and do their important work much later in their life.  Experimentalists rarely preconceived a work, they figure out what they are painting by acutally painting it. 

Isn’t it assuring to know that you may be an experimental innovators in David Galenson’s study and thus you haven’t made it big in the art world early in your career?  As long as you have the passion for creating art, who is to say that you won’t be successful in the future.

If you are interested in reading the article about David Galenson’s research, you can go to http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/genius.html?pg=1&topic=genius&topic_set=