Creative personalities and proclivities
by Ana Špehar
22/02/2021
The Colour of Creative Entrepreneurship
Creative process is an intriguing and deeply personal undertaking, but one which can be unpacked through many different reflective tools. A particular theorem of how people work came across my path and I undertook to speak to three Cork artists to uncover their dominant function and how they implement it in their creative process.
The theorem came from Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung who postulated that there are four principal psychological functions by which we experience the world and one of these functions is dominant most of the time.
Jung divided the personalities on two axes. The first axis determines whether someone is introvert or extrovert, and the second one if someone is a thinker or a feeler.
Introverts like to think about ideas and concepts. They think before they act and find hard to promote themselves.
Extroverts get energy from other people; they need external stimulation to perform and rather just try out new things instead of thinking about them. Extroverts like to keep themselves busy and can get bored quickly.
Thinkers tend to see the world in black and white and can make quick decisions.This decisiveness makes doing business with them is fast and efficient.
Feelers base their decisions on their gut feeling and take personal relationship into account when communicating. They make decisions based on what it means for other people involved rather than just facts.
This is what the Artists had to say about their ways of creating and how this intersected with Jung’s theories.
Ethan Desmond is a young Cork based artist who since graduating in Cork Institute of Technology in 2014 Ethan has started his own business “From The Sketch…Up!” offering bespoke illustrations as well as pre-drawn, print ready digital illustrations“As an Earth Green leading towards the Co-ordinator/supporter roles I tend to aim to create with empathy, to try and invoke feeling and thought with my art, and its message means as much to me as the creative process itself. “
“I value depth and that has influenced the level of detail I put into my work.
Each piece is a reflective message about how we feel, what we see, as people. With my work, my first target is Earth Green – empathy and emotion. Second would be Sunshine Yellow. I try to involve the viewer and speak to them. Then Cool Blue : fine detail, task focused and thoughtful. Lastly would be the Fiery Red type, extraverted, motivating and attractively bright. Focusing on these types allows me to create with a wider, all-inclusive audience inn mind.”
Jurgita Greene is an Irish local these past sixteen years, who hails from Vilinus, Lithuania. In 2015 Jurgita and her husband Michael opened accessories shop ‘Milady’, where Jurgita, creates fashionable accessories, and exquisite handmade Russian dolls.
“I would say that I find myself between blue and red, I am a bit of both. While enjoying my hobby of making dolls I am definitely more in the blue part of the Jung’s test, but while running the business I would describe myself as the red. When I start making a doll I don’t even know how it will look like. I started making them because I love the way they look and I love the tiny fashion details on them. Every doll is unique as I always have new ideas on what to add to the doll.”
You can take a look at these beautiful dolls in Milady, 35 Princess Street, where Jurgita will greet you with a smile on her face and gladly have a chat about the whole process of doll making, or on her Facebook and Instagram pages.
Billy O’Callaghan, is from Douglas, Cork and author of two novels and four collections of short stories. His stories have been translated into more than a dozen languages and he has a new novel ‘Life Sentences’ on its way in January to be published by Jonathan Cape.
“Personality-wise, I will have to admit to falling pretty firmly into Jung’s Earth Green category. Over the years and largely out of necessity, in order to facilitate writing workshops and give readings at festivals, I have learned in public moments to at least somewhat hold back my deep-set introversion. Yet my natural state continues to lean towards solitude, contemplation and reflection. Everything else is an ordeal.”
“If art is at its core the most truthful expression of the artist, then my writing is my way of figuring out the world and my place in it, the circumstances and concerns of my daily life, and the hopes, fears and constant doubts that keep me lying awake long into the night.
My stories evolve slowly, from these nagging troubles, and I make some sense of them by building them into fictional scenarios and working them until they feel bearable.”
“Looking at the chart now, and reading the description of an Earth Green personality, the word “harmony” also resonates, particularly in terms of work. I rewrite relentlessly, always chasing a kind of language-satisfaction, needing the internal musicality of the sentences to achieve the kind of cohesive balance that I can’t begin to define but will know on some instinctual level when it feels right. Only when that happens can a story feel finished.”
And for the end I did the Jung’s test myself to see how it fits into my creative process.
My name is Ana Špehar and I am a poet, originally from Croatia, but for the past five years a Corkonian. My work was published in A New Ulster, Boyne Berries, Solstice sounds and poetry anthologies “A Journey Called Home” and “Cork Words”. My poetry is themed around love and love of Ireland, my endless inspirations.
By Jung’s colour test I am definitely a Sunshine Yellow, in all aspects of my life. As most of my poetry is love themed, my creative process is led by emotions and I am thriving to turn feelings into words. I love being surrounded with people, although they would probably describe me as a very quiet person. But I just love the energy of socialising and getting inspired through conversations. Sunshine Yellow is also described as action oriented. I’m not quite sure if that fits my personal description but I would say it does portray my writing process. When inspired, I tend to shut myself from the world and work until I am completely satisfied with what I have wrote.
Few notes
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Pick from our IGTV channel: Jo, our Editor-in-Chief went on quite a few play dates with creators and makers. Hope you enjoy them at leisure. We propose slow watching..instead of binging.
