16 years after walking away from a prestigious architecture career, Paul Fairweather is on a mission to convert creativity sceptics to believers.
In his book Bold, Brave and a bit Quirky, released on December 6, one of his favourite theories of creativity is one that “applies to absolutely everybody”.
This theory was developed from a guest on his podcast, Jake Kahana, who said: “Creativity is simply noticing an opportunity and then fostering its development.”
The book is part memoir, part creative manifesto, of the architect-turned-artist, turned creativity theoriser, turned keynote speaker and workshop presenter, turned podcast host, and now, officially, turned author…
Sitting at his regular morning haunt Dicki’s at New Farm, where his art hangs on the walls, Mr Fairweather confesses over a pot of peppermint tea that he never thought of himself as a good writer because of his dyslexia.
“I learned to write by accident,” he said.
When a friend asked him to contribute an article for a design book about 12 years ago, he at first turned him down, but after some persuasion, turned over a “stream-of-consciousness” piece he expected to be heavily improved by the editor before it saw the light of day.
The friend, however, loved it, and in the end, it was published with just minor edits.
Bubbling over with ideas, wordplay and jokes, the cat’s out of the bag: Mr Fairweather is a natural writer.
As someone always known as an artist, an Archibald finalist at that, he was keen to prove his authorial authority this time around and was determined not to illustrate the book, until he came to a realisation.
“As this thing has gone on, I now know that my thing is around ideas, stories and visuals; I’m a visual storyteller,” Mr Fairweather said.
So, the book is filled with his signature watercolour artwork too.
One of his chapters is about balancing “creativity ions” – like in chemistry, you need the positive and the negative to create ions.
“It’s about the duality of people wanting to have inspiration, but with inspiration comes rumination, and then procrastination.”
His work co-hosting the Common Creative podcast with Chris Meredith, where they interview people from various professions, countries and walks of life about creativity in their lives, provides rich discussions from which he develops some of his ideas.
“I say at the end of every episode that after 180-odd episodes talking about creativity, every time we learn a new perspective or a new technique,” he said.
Paul Fairweather will host a book signing in Merthyr Village on December 13, at 2:30pm – get your copy there or head online to paulfairweather.com/book.
