I’d like to put an end to the myth that age diminishes creativity. There’s a frustrating and incorrect idea out there that to be creative means to be young. Hollywood and the celebrity machine are big culprits because of their obsessive desire to reach youthful audiences. And even in advertising, business, social, and nonprofit spaces, there’s also a strong bias in favor of young people when it comes to creativity.
The problem is there’s no science to support that idea. A Psychology Today study reported in 2009 that creativity doesn’t diminish with age. Shelley H. Carson, Ph.D., in her article “Creativity and the Aging Brain,” concluded, “I suggest that we change our expectations of the elderly. Instead of referring to ‘the aging problem,’ we should expect our seniors to be productive throughout the lifespan.”
Economist David Galenson, author of “Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity,” views the issue not as “creative versus not creative,” but through the lens of different approaches to creativity at different times of life.
Tom Jacobs wrote about 221 famous painters of the 19th and 20th centuries and compared their total lifespans with the year they created their most highly valued work. On average, the painters produced those pieces when they were 41.92 years old; they had lived just under 62 percent of their total lives.
Drake Baer reported in Fast Company that 42% of Robert Frost’s poems were written after the age of 50. For Wallace Stevens, it was 49%. For William Carlos Williams, it was 44%. This extends into other fields: Oliver Sacks, the beloved psychologist, was super creative into his 80s. The sculptor Louis Bourgeois said, “I am a long-distance runner. It takes me years and years and years to produce what I do”—and she did her best work in her 80s.
Emine Saner reported in The Guardian on acclaimed artist Paula Rego: Working in her studio for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, Paula Rego’s creative drive is as intense as ever. “Even if I’m tired when I start working, by the end I have a lot of energy,” she says. “It’s very important for women to keep working.” At the age of 73, she has never considered retiring.
In advertising, older creative professionals are everywhere. One of my favorites is Lee Clow, longtime creative director, and more recently chairman emeritus, TBWA\Media Arts Lab, who recently retired (theoretically). Lee created the legendary 1984 Apple commercial and worked closely with Steve Jobs for 30 years. He’s done break-through advertising for brands like Nike, Nissan, Olympia Beer, Pacific Northwest Bell, Pioneer Electronics, Pizza Hut, Porsche, and Yamaha. He’s considered a creative guru, and even after officially “retiring” at 78, he’ll be surfing more, but I have a feeling he’s not completely walking away from advertising.
The bottom line is that creativity isn’t related to age as much as it is hunger—the never-ending desire to observe, learn, and grow.
As long as you’re exploring, trying new things, reflecting about what could be, and not afraid to fail, you’ll stay creative as long as you desire. As Carolyn Gregoire has written:
Creative people are insatiably curious—they generally opt to live the examined life, and even as they get older, maintain a sense of curiosity about life. Whether through intense conversation or solitary mind-wandering, creatives look at the world around them and want to know why, and how, it is the way it is.
That’s not an age decision; that’s a mindset decision.
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