ABSTRACT
More attempts to analyse sources of creative energy have focused on the consequences, not so much of external pressures as of inner psychological ones, investigating individuals who present themselves as neurotic patients, perhaps more inherently neurotic than the specifically war-damaged Owen. Repression as an impediment to development is self-evident in innumerable instances in childhood and adolescence, as it is in mature life, in the obvious reduction of achievement. Where attention has centred on the circumstances which might be thought to encourage the development of artistic fluency in the young, independently of any assumption of prior disposition, the family environment has been identified (unsurprisingly) as important. Education begins informally at home. When a child shows early facility in art in a supportive family, that support is likely to determine not only the materials used and the scale of the earliest work, but also subject -matter and style. Adult artistic preferences inevitably infuse the assistance received.
