Wake Up Your Dormant Creativity in San Miguel De Allende
Updated October 2020
Exploring your creative side
San Miguel de Allende, about 160 miles from Mexico City, has been an artist’s enclave since the 1920’s. Big windows common to Mexican colonial homes and ample sunlight produce a light that many say is unique to the city, a glow.
American men moved to San Miguel de Allende in large number after World War II to attend a U.S. accredited art school on the G.I. Bill. An American presence has been strong ever since, with over 15,000 Americans living there today (population: 200,000).
People that come to live in San Miguel de Allende discover themselves exploring their artistic side, according Jessica Avendano, a native of San Miguel de Allende who has watched hundreds of expats settle into new lives in San Miguel in her work in a real estate office. “In San Miguel de Allende, it is common to find expats exploring work and lifestyles completely different from their past.”
Expat Bryan Townsend compared the city to Aspen, Santa Fe, or Banff, Canada, other cities in which creativity centers the local culture. After coming to San Miguel, the atmosphere eventually rejuvenated his enthusiasm for music, playing and composing contemporary classical guitar. He plans on taking up drawing, “something that never would have occurred to me before moving here.”
Shedding the past
The question is were expats who have made the choice of San Miguel de Allende creative before and finally able to a move to a place more in keeping with their intrinsic nature? Or did they move to San Miguel and become more creative?
Is San Miguel de Allende the cause or the effect of the increased sense of creativity and self-expression accessed by so many who move there?
The long tradition of the foreign sojourn to spark creativity
Living abroad has long been associated with stimulating creativity. Many artists have produced their most famous works either while abroad or soon after their return.
All four winners of the Nobel Prize in literature from Ireland spent significant time abroad. Painters Gauguin and Picasso, and composers Handel, Stravinsky and Schoenberg created many of their most famous works in foreign countries. Nabokov wrote Lolita while living in Paris. Hemingway began writing The Sun Also Rises in Spain, and finished it in Paris.
There is so much anecdotal evidence tying increased creativity and living abroad that the connection between the two has always been a given. But in 2007, William W. Maddux and Adam D. Galinsky finally provided the first scientific studies that correlated the experiences of living abroad to enhanced creativity. It makes you more ready to accept ideas from unfamiliar sources. The longer the period in another country, they learned, the stronger the effect.
Maddux and Galinsky’s studies showed that only living abroad, not visiting, could be associated with surges in creativity. Personal growth comes from the periodic rushes of emotions, solving problems and interacting daily with another country’s culture on a sustained level. At times it exposes nerve endings - your prejudices, your values and even self-inflicted limitations that vacations can’t.
Creativity doesn’t have to diminish with age.
Also encouraging for potential retirees is the evidence that creativity need not diminish with age. Ample examples spanning all forms of art and literature illustrate that it need not. Many examples exist of artists producing some of their greatest work in their final years.
Matisse designed the mural and windows of the Venice chapel while restricted to bed with arthritis, German writer Thomas Mann completed one of his greatest works, Confessions of Felix Krull, at 80. Herman Melville wrote his second master work, Billy Budd, in his final years.
There’s even a German name for it, alterstiehl, the revitalized brilliance of an older artist. Creativity is the recombining of elements in new ways or through different filters of experience. The older you are, the more ideas and influences you have to pull from.
One of the most interesting things about master works of famous artists in their latter years is not that they produced great works (they’d done that for years). It is that what they produced was so totally different from anything they’d ever done before. For example Verdi, a composer of tragic operas, wrote Falstaff, the last of his operas, as a comedy just before he turned 80.
A more progressive mindset
With time, we get more comfortable with ambiguity. Lifestyles become more simple and spiritual. Getting beat up for decades by losses and mistakes can have a softening effect, making us more progressive and liberal (Supreme court judges are notorious proof of this, often becoming more liberal after assuming the bench).
With all these tendencies, It’s not hard to understand why San Miguel de Allende would be a magnet for artists. Its historical district is small enough to run into artists of every level of aspiration. Many expats are wowed by the hundreds and galleries and art centers like San Miguel de Allende’s Fabrica La Aurora, inspiring them to join the creative community or at least find ways to express a different side of themselves. “Men tell me they’d never dress the way they do here at home,” said Avendano.
In the end, San Miguel de Allende is not just about creating art or dressing differently, but about freedom. Freedom from wilting careers, freedom from the expectations of those back home, freedom to do things “you’d never do at home.”
Related Links:
San Miguel’s local newspaper, Atención, is printed in both English and Spanish (you will need Adobe player to view the site)
For more pictures of San Miguel de Allende, check out Ventanas Mexico’s Pinterest page.
That deeper connection that forms by living in, not visiting a country - [blog] Ventanas Mexico.
One man’s quest for the good life in San Miguel de Allende.
San Miguel as the ex-hippy getaway - Expats in Mexico blog
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About the Author:
Kerry Baker is author of three books. Her second book, If Only I Had a Place is an insider’s guide (way in) to renting well in Mexico in a way that will set you up for the best possible expat life.
The third book is The Mexico Solution: Saving your money, time, and quality of life through part-time life in Mexico is her most recent book. The most entertaining instruction manual you will ever find on Mexico.
Most recently she released The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico, a cookbook for travelers, expats and snowbirds seeking to maintain a healthy diet (clue: You must cook.)