Terry Marks-Tarlow, Ph.D.

I have always been conflicted about my creativity - irresistibly drawn yet convinced I lacked talent. Towards the end of my university years, I attended Rhode Island School of Design for a summer. There I studied rendering while playing at being an artist. Once again, I reached the same conclusion: I would never make it professionally. Besides who wants to be poor?

My art had a long hiatus during my psychology graduate school days. Following a dissertation on depression, I went into crisis. With my Ph.D. in hand, I still hadn't found my passion. I decided to specialize in creativity, despite no academic background. I worked with GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) teachers in Lawndale, CA for many years to develop a creativity curriculum, eventually published as Creativity Inside Out: Learning Through Multiple Intelligences, Addison-Wesley, 1996, forword by Howard Gardner.

During the mid-1980s, I returned to my art. While moderating a UCLA Extension course on creativity, I met a sculptor named Tom Van Sant who held weekly life drawing sessions at his home in Hollywood. There I had the honor of meeting and drawing with the late physicist Richard Feynman, who also regularly attended. During this period of my life, I began voracious reading in science, leading to my current interest in nonlinear dynamics and a book in progress on the application of contemporary science to psychotherapy.

After Feynman died in 1988, the drawing sessions fell apart. Feeling bereft, I abandoned art altogether for over 12 years. Then, a couple of years ago I started drawing again, realizing I could host my own drawing sessions.

During my earlier period of drawing, I was more interested in long poses, in hopes of perfecting each drawing. Now I'm more attracted to 2 or 3-minute poses, with a primary focus on line. I discovered the technique of putting multiple poses on the same page originally to save space. Then the poses began interacting with one another in interesting ways. Eventually, I "invented" a form of synchronicity, where a single line served multiple purposes. Not surprisingly, this occurred just as I was writing about synchronicity from a nonlinear point of view.

Terry Marks-Tarlow
September, 2006