The deceptive art of child’s play

Despite decades of brain-imaging studies, neuroscientists have been unable to define the circuitry involved in creative brilliance. To be fair, it often confounds the gifted themselves.

Take the award-winning whiteGREY creative director, Ronojoy Ghosh, better know as Tin Tin Ghosh. Also a children’s book author and renowned illustrator, TinTin reveals, without apparent irony, that inspiration for his naïf works of art flows from listening to death metal music.

“As a kid my favourite band was Iron Maiden,” recalls TinTin, 41. “And I still love listening to heavy death metal bands, like Obituary [hits include ‘Chopped in Half’ and ‘Ten Thousand Ways to Die’].

“It puts me in the zone for work. It’s a kind of music therapy, but the pictures I draw are completely different from what I’m listening to. I don’t know how it works.

“My son, Shay, who’s nine, is following in my footsteps. He loves an Indian thrash metal band called Kryptos, as do I. And he reads … in the car on his way to school, on his way back