Blogpost 3: Artist's Talent

If you’re a left brain dominant person it means you are intellectual, you have the tendency to analyze things around you. And if you are right brain dominant person it means you have the ability to turn everything into a masterpiece; your imagination gives you the ability to do so. Are you familiar with those statements? Yeah I had believe in that too until I was in high school. My teacher explains to us how we use both side of the brain, she also said different kind of people have different structure according to research. So does that mean that you cannot obtain certain ability? How about the artist’s talent? Can you be like them? Or is talent need to be inborn?

Of course I was curious about the brain of an artist works; how could they produce something so beautiful and meaning. So while researching, I stumbled across an article “Artists brains are 'structurally different' claims new study” in independent.co.uk written by James Vincent. In his article, he said that a small study published in Neuroimage did a brain scan to both art and non-art student. It showed that art student have more grey matter in the part of their brain that is related to visual imagery and fine motor control.

He also stated that “Although this is certainly a physical difference it does not mean that artists’ talents are innate. The balance between the influence of nature and nurture is never easy to divine, and the authors say that training and upbringing also plays a large role in ability.”

I have to agree with what he stated on his article. If we are trying to figure out the geniuses of the mankind, we need to see if they are somewhat different from us at birth. Of course they already have certain traits in them, but there is no evidence that their success is because of genetics. They obtain their skills from the environment they were in.

Because I was so into “innate talent is a myth” I tried to research more about it and I accidently saw an article about it: “On Innate Talent” in psychologytoday.com written by Scott Barry Kaufman. In his article he explained some of the views of psychologist on innate talents like John Watson for example. John Watson said that even though you gave him a dozen of random infants he can pick one and train him to be whatever profession he wanted to.

He also wrote that “ Every student has a range as to what they can achieve; the key is for educators to help students reach their upper limit, and make sure there aren't environmental factors that are hindering a student from doing so”

So it says that the innate talent is not somewhat a myth because innate talent is a key factor in learning. Like if a child wanted to learn to play the piano, it will be a lot easier for her to learn if she already has nature from nurture. But if we see a child exhibiting a skill in playing the piano it shows that nature comes first before nurture. Just like an artist, some already have the talent but it does not mean that you cannot learn it. You also could be a great artist someday.