ABOUT ME
“Some journeys happen in the world around us, but many a journey happens within us first, and it was within those quests that I began to think about the reasons for the quests themselves and untangle the mysteries of creativity.”
I have been a student of visual arts and creativity all my life. I took my first art lessons before the age of five. I graduated from the University of Toronto in Fine Art History where I focused on the creative impulses of the artists I studied. As a student I worked in the university’s Department of Medicine, where I helped model the Renal-Epithelial Barrier, and designed multiplexors to mimic neuronal activity.
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I worked for over 20 years as a sculptor, visual artist, and graphics designer. I taught sculpting at the Royal Ontario Museum, and I taught drawing classes at the Living Arts Centre to people who believed they couldn’t draw, to great acclaim from the students.
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I have worked in several industries, including energy and manufacturing, as a product designer and computer programmer. I designed circuit boards for video control machines, made industrial molds to convert gasoline engines to cleaner natural gas, and was the first person at a global company to use a personal computer to solve logistics and transportation challenges and schedules.
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I am the head of Ingenious Chihuahua, a creativity training and publishing company. You can reach me at Dominic@DominicHay.com
Imagery Credits: Vecteezy
Creative Modes, Creative Ways
CREATIVE MODES CREATIVE WAYS is all about generating your own chances, opportunities, and personal growth, using the natural abilities you were born with, so you can employ them as your situations and circumstances change throughout life. Too many authority figures in our lives have judged and discouraged creative people, processes, products, and environments. We have learned to become our own worst critics, stifling our own ideas and initiatives. Take heart! Creativity is a natural, learnable human cognitive process.
WHY I WROTE YOU THIS BOOK
I wrote this book to help you create more chances in your life.
Using several learning methods, I show many ways to open your inherent creativity. There are exercises using the HUGH Process© (HUnting, Gathering, Harvesting). There are dozens of suggestions and tips to help you.
You don’t have to wait any longer for a second chance, you can generate your own when you need them, by using the simple methods I’ve outlined for you in this book.
To appeal to different learning styles, I divided the book into three approaches:
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a fictional narrative on the origins of creativity (a holistic approach)
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a theoretical framework employing sentient Modes for how our minds generate creativity quite naturally via our given senses (an explanatory reductionist approach)
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a set of examples I call Ways to illustrate how creativity might be applied to different areas of interest (an instructional approach).
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT THE BOOK
“With Creative Modes, Creative Ways, readers embark on an engaging journey to unlock and unleash their inner creativity. The innovative mixture of narrative story and instruction provides a unique approach for learning the invaluable skill that is honing one's creative power - a potent tool in shaping ourselves as we move forward with discovering our full potential.”
Dr. Cyndi Burnett,
Associate Professor,
International Center for Studies in Creativity,
SUNY Buffalo State
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…. one of the few distinctly original books about creativity that I have ever seen … Its high quality reflects his usual exacting standards of thought and artisanship, and the different approaches he offers are original and refreshing, providing you with many ways to explore your creative process.
Gray Hammond,
from the foreword
Even before I finished reading this book, I bought a copy for a colleague. Getting past the creative block, whether it be a blank computer screen or having the urge to photograph but not knowing what to shoot can be overcome by reading this book.
M J Prosser,
Photographer
Dominic Hay's book speaks to every one of us in terms of finding different 'modes' of creativity in our personal lives. Creativity is not the realm of genius or people with 'big brains'. It is available to all of us if we want it. In Creative Modes, Creative Ways, Dominic leads us through simple stories based on a number of ways of being. Some of us operate better through sight, others sound and so on. He includes 25 ways in which you can enhance your personal creativity, for example Abstraction, where one takes patterns within a topic and abstracts that to another situation. He also explains how critical thinking can be the spur to asking better questions, which are the breakfast of creativity champions. Concepts such as Refraction (aka turning bad habits into superpowers) and Phoenix (using critical incidents as a spur to creative action) are covered. Using examples from a wide range of subject areas from science to psychology and philosophy and using a storytelling style makes this book an easy read for anyone wishing to harness their creativity through discovering what lies within each of us. Peter Cook Author, Speaker, Consultant, Scientist, Musician
“Creative Modes Creative Ways' above all is thought-provoking! Dominic Hay cleverly intertwines his teaching with an evolutionary tale of invention. Read this to understand the creative process and how to reactivate your creativity. As a bonus, he shares his experiences to alert you of nefarious forces to watch for on your personal journey.”
David Goldstein,
author of
CREATIVE YOU: Using Your Personality to Thrive
"Whenever anyone creates anything, the first question they're always asked is where did you get your idea from. In Dominic Hay's fascinating and illuminating book, he doesn't just cover where ideas come from, but where creativity itself came from. Taking us back to the stone age he cleverly mixes story with theory to really bring the process of creativity to life and explains how we can all be more creative."
Neil Pavitt,
author of Brainhack and How to be Creative
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