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Rafael Rojas
Rafael Rojas (Master Hasselblad 2014, MA Photography, ARPS), is a Swiss and Spanish full-time artist photographer, lecturer, author, and creativity mentor.
He has been involved in teaching most of his life, first helping young students, then teaching undergrads, and later as a university lecturer.
Nowadays, his teaching activities focus on helping photographers see the world with different eyes and use photography as a tool of personal and creative expression.
After seven years of work, the MasterCOURSE “Photography with Intent”, an intensive mentoring program for Expressive Photographers, has become the apex of his teaching career and his utmost contribution to the Community of Photographers.
Many are the individuals who have praised the beneficial effects of limitations and constraints in the creative process.
The enemy of art is the absence of limitations. ~ Orson Wells
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution ~ Igor Stravinsky
In the book “Wired to Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind,” Scott Barry Kaufman mentions that creativity “Involves variability – different ways of doing things,” but also “involves constraints, which can either promote or preclude creativity”.
It might seem logical to think that an artist which plenty of tools, options, and possibilities will see his or her artistic output thrive. The reality seems to be just the opposite.
Even if it is true that a minimum of resources is needed to create, limitations and constraints reduce the overwhelming feeling triggered by too much freedom and channel creative energies, providing a framework and helping us focus our attention, energy, and work. All writers and painters dread the blank page or empty canvas syndrome. This effect is nothing but the consequence of the total absence of limitations and constraints. Right before the first word is written or the first brush stroke is laid on the canvas, all possibilities are there for the artist to grasp. The sheer amount of options available, theoretically infinite, can freeze the creative process even before it starts. As soon as the first few sentences are written, the story starts being channelled, and the options get progressively reduced. Constraints appear as the beginning of a plot begin to materialize. The painter experiences the same progressive liberation as paint disrupts the empty space. Each brush stroke informs the following one, and as the painting emerges on the canvas, the options get narrower and narrower, the idea clearer and more transparent and the actions more focused and determined.