The Spark She Gave Me: Creativity, Art, and AI

Channeling Your Inner Designer

The tools may change. But the creative spark remains.

Today is my mom’s birthday.

She’s the reason I ever picked up a pencil, a brush, or a camera.

She taught me art the quiet way, not through big speeches, but by giving me room to try, mess up, and try again. She fueled the creative side of my brain long before I had words for it.

And she still creates.

The pens, the process, the discarded attempts, the finished designs, they’re living, breathing evidence of her imagination at work.

The Picture in My Head

I became a photographer because my drawings and paintings never quite looked like the picture that lived in my head. The distance between what I could see and what my hands could make used to frustrate me.

Photography brought me closer. It still does.

When a New Tool Brings It Closer

Lately, I’ve been creating AI sketches, and something unexpected has happened: they bring me even nearer to that original picture in my mind—and they do it in a fraction of the time.

That doesn’t replace the years of looking, noticing, and practicing that my mom gave me. It simply removes some of the friction between vision and result.

AI vs Creativity

I don’t want art to always be fast or easy.

I love the talented artists who create the way my mom does, expertly, with their hands, with care, and with the kind of knowledge that can come only from practice and patience.

I think about the old downspouts that were once shaped like fish or gargoyles, little works of art that also happened to move water. Now, so many are made from inexpensive, functional aluminum. Useful, certainly. But something was lost when the creativity disappeared, and I sometimes fear AI will do the same thing, or perhaps it will allow us to re-incorporate creativity in the everyday.

So, here’s the only observation I’ll offer today. It isn’t a rule, just something I’ve noticed:

There’s Room for Both

Tools that help us get closer to the picture in our heads can free us to create. And the people who still take the long way (the ones whose pens, processes, discarded attempts, and finished designs keep the creative spark alive) continue to inspire the rest of us.

Happy birthday, Mom.

Thank you for the spark that still burns, and for showing me every day that my creative side is worth following.

And to everyone reading along: may whatever you’re creating this week hold a little of both… the ease when you need it, and the creative heart that never rushes.

~ Suzi