When you paint you are using two distinct areas of your brain. One is the up front, active brain known to neurologists as “task positive.” This is where you try to paint well, get the anatomy right, master colour, achieve a decent design as well as other practicalities of the moment.

The second area is farther back in the cortex and is more the resting brain—what is known as “task negative.” Neurologists also call this the “default mode network.” This is where attention wanders when the task-positive brain is not being fully used. Here are daydreams, memories, fantasies, fictitious conversations and even thoughts about things that have nothing to do with the job at hand. To their surprise, neurologists found that this wandering mind uses almost as much energy as the one that gives the appearance of getting things done.

Average people are in their task-negative brains more than a third of their waking hours. Apparently, artistic and inventive folk are even more into it. As such, the default mode network is thought to be the buzzing beehive of creativity.