Left versus right brained- a myth?

By Helen Fortin I’ve been quite busy the month of June preparing for and exhibiting in some lovely art shows. As I toured the galleries where I was showing,... L’article Left versus right brained- a myth? est apparu en premier sur Sherbrooke Record .

By Helen Fortin I’ve been quite busy the month of June preparing for and exhibiting in some lovely art shows. As I toured the galleries where I was showing, I came upon some beautiful pencil sketches and as I had never really taken a lot of drawing courses, I decided it would be a satisfying challenge to go back to drawing for awhile. Some painters maintain that they cannot draw, although painting comes naturally to them.

From what I’ve read, it seems we aren’t pushed enough to focus on drawing in elementary and high school so when we find the taste for paint, we feel it will come naturally as it is ‘only’ drawing. A lot of my artist friends, and yes, even some former mentors, say not to waste my time as over the years I have probably picked up the essentials through the paint brush.

We’ll see. I maintain it never hurts to refresh your skills and add to your artistic arsenal. As many discussions ensued, the question of being right versus left brained in art came up.

From the stolid believers that drawing is essential to painting, they suggested a review of the basics from what they considered a ‘bible’ for drawing, no matter how advanced you may be, so I bought Betty Edwards ‘Drawing on the right side of the brain’. I’m just getting into it and the argument is all too familiar to me. Is the theory a myth?

When I worked as a Publisher’s Representative years ago, Math, Science, and Engineering, the ‘left or hard’ side subjects competed with the Arts, the ‘soft or right’ side. We are pushed to excel toward the ‘hard’ rather than the ‘soft’ side of our brains because the world has gone the way of the almighty dollar and apparently there is more money on the ‘hard’ side... We may go the way of the dodo bird if we are not careful with this attitude.

In any case, I wanted to know. Am I left or right brained? Does it really matter?

Can’t I be both? This is how it works. According to Psychology Today: ‘The human brain includes two hemispheres connected by a bundle of nerves... most behaviors and abilities require activity in both halves of the brain.

A widespread myth suggests that some people, whose left hemisphere is dominant overall, are more quantitative, logical, and analytical, while right-brained individuals are more emotional, intuitive, and creative. Like many ways of categorizing people, the left brain/right brain dichotomy is appealing , promising to teach individuals about how they think and why. But the reality of hemispheric specialization is much more complex than this popular concept suggests.

While the brain’s left and right hemispheres do handle distinct functions , their duties aren’t strictly divided according to broad categories like “logical” or “creative.” The Dana Foundation goes further. ‘Perhaps the most seductive and tenacious belief about brain lateralization is that the right hemisphere is the creative side—so much so that “right-brained” has become a kind of shorthand for “creative.”

But creativity remains an elusive phenomenon that resists simple explanations. There is indeed evidence that a particular region of the right hemisphere is activated in certain kinds of creative breakthrough—the “aha” moment of insight in which the answer to a problem appears suddenly and without conscious knowledge of the steps that led there. But the problem-solving process leading up to the insight, it appears, depends on a more broadly distributed cortical network.

What’s more, research suggests that a different manifestation of creativity, the ability to make up stories, weaving unrelated objects or phenomena into a coherent narrative, chiefly relies on the left brain. It may be that rather than reflecting the dominance of one hemisphere over the other, creativity in essence represents a glowing demonstration of their ability to work together. ... Please subscribe to read the rest in the Townships Weekend, published every month (this is from the issue published on July 3) L’article

Left versus right brained- a myth? est apparu en premier sur Sherbrooke Record .