Most books about creativity describe a process. This one describes a place.

It is a guide for building your own habitat within the creative environment. And it is a problem-solving tool, pointing towards solutions to artistic challenges and growth.

Artist and educator Neal Von Flue offers a map rather than a method: a diagram—part Venn and part color wheel—built from the three forces that shape our creative lives. Where they overlap are the secondaries; the vibrant areas where a medium gets pushed past its limits, where artists work in brave isolation, and where we meet our own fear or find our strengths. Where the three primaries mix is the rich soil that every artist can rely on to grow their most accessible and impactful works.

Part theory and part field guide, this handy reference book charts the whole environment, explains how it can be used, sets it alongside established models of creativity, and closes with more than thirty practical exercises for tuning your own mixture and pulling works into balance.