the creative continuum

I recently read a small article in the NY Times about Jeanette Winterson. Since winning the Whitbread first-novel award in 1985 for Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Winterson has had a prolific and wide-ranging literary career. Her columns appear regularly in British newspapers, and her dozen plus books include novels, story collections, essays and children's books. The NY Times notes that 'in some ways, Winterson's success is a triumph over her upbringing. Raised in a working-class Pentecostal household with only six books (including The Bible), Winterson writes that she "was not encouraged to be clever." But she persisted.' She says:

"Art is central to all our lives, not just the better-off and educated. I know that from my own story, and from the evidence of every child ever born - they all want to hear and to tell stories, to sing, to make music, to act out little dramas, to paint pictures, to make sculptures. This is born in and we breed it out. And then, when we have bred it out, we say that art is elitist, and at the same time we either fetishize art - the high prices, the jargon, the inaccessibility - or we ignore it. The truth is, artist or not, we are all born on the creative continuum, and that is a heritage and a birthright of all our lives."