What's in a Word?

On the whole creative vs. innovative thing. That's just my take on the words. The word "creative" used to mean more than it does now, in my estimation. It's gotten watered down by kit crafters putting together someone's mass produced idea of an art object and receiving praise with the well-worn phrase, "Oh, you're so creative!"

To me, the word "creative" doesn't mean the dictionary definition "resulting from originality of thought, expression, etc.; imaginative" any more. Whereas, the word "innovative" denotes (again to me), something new and exciting, a change from the established, an idea tweaked, pushed, moved forward even just a little bit. As another artist refers to it, "a visual speed bump." Something that makes you slow down and take a second look.

Jenny Saville's paintings, for instance. She's a British artist who does huge paintings of large figures, usually women. She took painting the nude to a new level. She went huge with huge. There are many more elements to her paintings that make them innovative, but even just that one element was the result of innovative thinking. We can take one scale and change it to make it different. We've all learned that in one class or another. However, she took it way further. Her paintings are several feet by several feet. The woman has to use a scaffold to paint!

Here's more on Jenny Saville, the bravest, gutsiest paint-pusher this side of Lucian Freud.