One's life can perhaps best be visualized as a series of shadows of white and variations on white. When a human being is born and is still new to this world, this white is untouched. As life progresses, a large variety of shades of white combine to create a characteristic tapestry or pattern to life that is unique to the individual. When a human being leaves this world, this life passage can also be thought of as a return to white. But the quality of this white, as well as that of the future colour of memory, is ours to determine. The degree of decency with which an individual life is led will determine the brilliance, purity and depth of this colour.
The ability of white to reflect and produce shadow and its unique capacity to produce the full spectrum of colour is also a metaphor for creativity. Producing a shadow entails the creation of volume: indeed, a special form of volume, unseen but implied and the result of intelligence alone. For those lucky individuals who possess the privilege of artistic self-expression, the creative process - filled as it is with the torments of composition, involving tension, irritation, effort, repetition, change, destruction and an eventual return - is nothing but the aspiration to reach illumination, nothing but continual approximations of white. The creative act is an attempt to find and express the absolute in this world. If this act is truly creative it requires neither proof, nor explanation, whether it is expressed through the medium of music, painting, literature or science. This is why art falls into two categories: that which is unconditional, and the rest.
The greatest and most perfect creative act was of course the Six Days of Creation. The selectivity demonstrated during this process was amazing: only ten phenomena were brought into being during these Six Days, yet these phenomena are fundamental to our world. It is difficult to comprehend, as each of us is focused on a multitude of different priorities. But eventually we always return to those ten basic phenomena created during the Six Days of Creation. If an artist proceeds from a moral core, he will gradually be drawn towards this initial and most perfect creative act: that of the beginning of Creation. Interestingly, the Creator chose the thirteen year old Bezalel to make the first religious art - including the Menorah and the Ark containing the Tablets with the Ten Commandments - that gave form to the faith's central beliefs. In doing so, the Creator filled him with a creative power that is supposed to be beyond human ability. This attempt to transcend human limitations remains the essential challenge for the Jewish artist and individual. This is what I define as the creative process.
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