I can't remember where I've heard that term before... but I've heard it: "creative" used as a noun to describe a person.  I've been thinking lately that the entire idea of being an "artist" puts you in a certain kind of cage.  It means your endeavors will be compared to "artists" of the past... and evaluated based on whatever ideas are floating around in the minds of those that comprise the "art world". it's quite limiting; and in me, it has created a pretty mean spirited inner critic that puts everything I make on trial.  I do enjoy having shows, and making artworks that fit into the contemporary category, but I also have so many other creative processes going on...  music, poems, films, and even "fan art" as it is called...   This last part is especially hard, because artwork like that... intentionally derivative artwork, will never be taken seriously in the art world.  It probably shouldn't be.  But does that mean I shouldn't make it? Should I be as embarrassed by it as the art world would have me be?

So I've realized that I've been dividing myself into pieces... considering some things "art" and not other things.  That's where this term "creative" becomes a more useful noun than "artist".  If you are an "artist", then you are evaluated according to arts rules...  and yes... there ARE rules.  But many creative endeavors don't fit there.  If evaluated as contemporary art, they will fail... but evaluated in some other way, they succeed.    So instead of the term "artist", I am preferring the term "creative".  If I am a "creative", everything I do can fit there...  from how I paint or draw, to how I teach, or parent, or cook, or arrange icons on a desktop.

It feels much more open and free to consider oneself as simply a "creative".  it allows me to let go of that nagging critic who mistakenly thinks I want to become some famous "artist".  Sometimes I find the very idea of being a "fine artist" to be hopelessly antiquated.  Being creative in the world today is so much bigger than that.  And art history is going to become completely irrelevant if it doesn't wake up and realize that the art in the galleries is just a small part of the history of creativity.  But that's another subject.

One connection I find useful is how it's become important for certain contemporary artists like Cindy Sherman and the like, to emphasize that even though they use photography in their art, they are not in fact "photographers".   Instead, they like the term "artists who use photography".  They use the medium, but they don't want their work evaluated in the same way photography is evaluated.... because they are using photography to a different end.

In the same way,  I make "art"...  but I like the idea that instead of simply being an "artist",  I can see myself as a "creative who makes art".  That way,  I don't have to care about those pesky RULES and fashions that are dictated to "artists".  If you're a creative... you don't have to care.  You just create.... in any way you want... toward any end.