Nothing - neither words, nor thoughts, nor even our actions express so clearly and faithfully ourselves, as our feelings; in them the character is not complex of a separate thought, not of a separate decision, but of the entire content of our soul.
K. D. Ushinsky

Human activity to meet its diverse needs is accompanied by manifestations of activity human in the form of emotional experiences. Emotions are a special class of subjective psychological states of a person, reflecting in the form of immediate experiences the process and the result of practical activities aimed at satisfying his actual needs. Emotions, Charles Darwin argued, arose in the process of evolution as a means by which living beings establish the significance of certain conditions for satisfying their needs. Emotions play a mobilizing, integrative-protective, communicative role in the activities of people. The basic emotional states that a person experiences are divided into their own emotions, feelings, and affects. The form of emotional experiences is the pleasure received from satisfaction of needs, and the displeasure associated with the inability to do this with the exacerbation of the corresponding need.
Feelings - the highest product of cultural and emotional development of a person, which usually arise in response to the impact of certain properties of the environment. They relate to the perception and evaluation of complex objects, events, people, situations. The manifestation of a strong and sustained positive feeling for something or someone is called passion. Stable feelings of moderate or weak force, acting for a long time, are called moods.
Affects are pronounced emotional states, accompanied by visible changes in the behavior of the person who experiences them. Affect does not precede behavior, but rather is shifted to its end. Affects, as a rule, interfere with the normal organization of behavior, its rationality. One of the most common types of affects these days is stress. It represents a state of excessively strong and prolonged psychological stress that occurs in a person when his nervous system receives an emotional overload. Stress disrupts human activity, disrupts the normal course of his behavior.

Emotion is the reaction of the whole personality (including the organism) to those situations to which it cannot adapt, and it has a predominantly functional significance. So, emotion causes a violation of memory, skills, and in general the replacement of difficult actions with lighter ones. Emotion corresponds to such a decrease in the level of adaptation, which occurs when the motivation is too strong compared to the real capabilities of the subject. Emotion is fear, anger, grief, sometimes joy, especially excessive joy. There is an optimum of motivation beyond which emotional behavior arises. With increased motivation, the quality of performance increases, but to a certain limit: if it is too large, the performance deteriorates. Emotion often arises because the subject is unable or unable to give an adequate response to stimulation. Conflicts are the main cause of emotions when the subject cannot easily find a solution. Emotions can mobilize a person, compensate for the lack of information, the lack of human ability to solve the problem.
Creativity as a process of creating something new often implies that a person may experience lack of information, knowledge, and skills to achieve a goal and solve a particular problem, so he needs to make a leap into the unknown, create new knowledge, skills, new objects and works . Emotions, inspiration, imagination help make this "breakthrough in creativity." Creativity takes place where the imagination is free from the shackles of logic due to emotions. There are 4 stages of the creative process: preparation; maturation, inspiration, verification of the found solution. Scientific creativity and especially creativity in art is based on imagination, which, in turn, is inextricably linked with the emotions and feelings of man. Imagination is a mental process, consisting in the creation of new models, representations obtained in previous experience. A kind of creative imagination associated with an awareness of the desired future is a dream. Creative thinking is not identical to the intellect and has the following distinctive features:

1. it is original, that is, it gives rise to unexpected, unbanal, unusual solutions;
2. it is mobile, that is, it is not difficult for creative thinking to move from one aspect of a problem to another, not limited to one single point of view;
3. it is plastic, that is, creative people offer many solutions in cases where an ordinary person can find only one or two.

It is known that emotions play an important role in a person’s life and in the implementation of any activity. The nature of their decisions and the achievement of results depend on what kind of experiences a person's life problems and situations cause.
The role of emotions, feelings in art is especially great.
Knowing the world of objects, phenomena, the life of man and animals, the child experiences different feelings and expresses his attitude to everything. This attitude has a positive or negative character and is associated with the feelings of a person: joy, sadness, admiration, resentment, love, hate. A person reacts emotionally to the actions and behavior of other people, as well as to his own statements and results of activity.
In the process of creative activity, the child experiences various experiences. As scientists L. S. Rubinstein, P.М. Jacobson, I. Ya. Lerner, V.S. Kuzin, they arise when the activity of the child, its content meets his needs (or, based on existing needs, cause others related to the subject of activity).
Pictorial activity is very interesting for a preschooler and a younger student, because it satisfies his desire to act in general and productively - in particular, as well as the need to reflect the impressions of life around him, to express his attitude to what he saw and experienced. This activity meets the characteristics of the thinking of children of this age; visual-effective and visual-figurative his character.
A child, even the smallest, loves to learn something new. Being engaged in drawing, modeling, application, he not only actively and independently acts, but also creates subject and subject pictures, decorative compositions, sculpture. Baby is pleased that he can create an image with his own hands.
Another significant need is cognitive. Art, including fine art, is a specific form of knowledge. Therefore, engaging in activities similar to art, the child learns life in its various manifestations.
Art is the most important means of aesthetic knowledge of the world.
Children of preschool and primary school age feel the need not only to learn, but also to master the ways of activity, skills and abilities. Thanks to this, they assimilate the socio-historical experience accumulated by mankind precisely in the artistic sphere. Thus, there is a process of mental development. Therefore, the mastery of skills and abilities in various types of graphic activity also contributes to the satisfaction of the child’s need for cognition, in understanding reality. A child likes to repeat something many times to learn, to remember. He is capable, it seems, to endlessly listen to the same tale, song, story. It is known how, striving for independence, children show an interest in acquiring the knowledge and skills that, in the opinion of teachers and psychologists, form the basis for the development of thinking.
In almost 100% of cases (as practice shows), children associate their attitude to any activity with how much they have mastered it (“it turns out” or “it does not work”). Polish journalist and teacher G. Filipchuk in the book Do you Know Your Child? Writes about the boy’s reluctance to go to kindergarten on a rainy day, because in bad weather the children do not walk, but stay in the group and draw. The child has not yet mastered the skills and abilities in drawing, and he is doing poorly. This is not just saddening the baby, but also adversely affects his attitude towards kindergarten.
The creativity of children is built not only on the knowledge of life, but also on acquaintance with the works of both classical and folk art: fine art (painting, drawing, sculpture, decorative art), musical, literary, theatrical, etc. All this opens up a new world for children - the world of artistic creativity of man and the artistic images created by him; expands the field of knowledge of the child, his sphere of interests, and at the same time develops the image and creative abilities. It also leads to a positive emotional attitude towards visual arts activities. Such an attitude, connected with the satisfaction of the need for knowledge of the new, in turn, activates the creative activity of man.

The role of emotions in cognitive processes and creativity

The presence of emotional phenomena in the process of knowledge was also noted by ancient Greek philosophers (Plato, Aristotle). However, the beginning of the discussion on the role of emotions in the cognitive process was laid by P. Jean and T. Ribot. According to P. Janet, emotions, being “secondary actions”, the reaction of the subject to his own action, regulate “primary actions”, including intellectual ones. T. Ribot, on the contrary, believed that in intellectual thinking there should not be any “emotional impurity”, since it is the affective nature of man that is most often the cause of illogicality. He shared intellectual and emotional thinking.

The connection of thinking with affects attached great importance to L. S. Vygotsky. He wrote: “Whoever cut off thinking from the very beginning from affect, he forever closed his way to explaining the reasons for thinking itself, because a deterministic analysis of thinking necessarily involves revealing the driving motives of thought, needs and interests, motivations and tendencies that direct the movement of thought into that or the other side ”(1956, p. 54).

S. L. Rubinstein also noted the need to associate thinking with the affective sphere of man. “Mental processes, taken in their concrete integrity, are not only cognitive, but also“ affective ”, emotional-volitional processes. They express not only knowledge about phenomena, but also their attitude towards them ”(1957, p. 264). In another work, he sharpens this question even more: “It is not only that emotion is in unity and interrelation with the intellect or thinking with emotion, but that thought itself as a real mental process is itself the unity of the intellectual and emotional, and emotion - the unity of emotional and intellectual "(" Problems of General Psychology ", 1973, p. 97-98).

Currently, most psychologists studying intellectual activity recognize the role of emotions in thinking. Moreover, the opinion is expressed that emotions not only affect thinking, but are an obligatory component of it (Simonov, 1975; Tikhomirov, 1969; Vinogradov, 1972; Vilyunas, 1976; Putlyaeva, 1979, etc.), or that most human emotions intellectually conditioned. There are even intellectual emotions that are different from the basic ones (see Section 6.5).

True, the opinions of the authors on the specific role of emotions in controlling thinking do not coincide. From the point of view of O. K. Tikhomirov, emotions are a catalyst of the intellectual process; they improve or worsen mental activity, speed up or slow it down. In another work (Tikhomirov, Klochko, 1980) he goes even further, considering emotions as a coordinator of mental activity, ensuring its flexibility, restructuring, correction, avoiding the stereotype, changing current settings. According to P. V. Simonov, emotions are only a trigger mechanism of thinking. L. V. Putlyaev considers both of these points of view to be hyperbolized and, in turn, distinguishes three functions of emotions in the thinking process: 1) emotions as an integral part of cognitive needs, which are the source of mental activity; 2) emotions as a regulator of the cognitive process itself at certain stages; 3) emotions as a component of the evaluation of the achieved result, i.e., as feedback.

The role of emotions in the intellectual creative process is diverse. This is the torment of creativity, and the joy of discovery. “The ardent desire for knowledge,” wrote Bernard, “is the only engine that attracts and supports the researcher in his efforts, and this knowledge, so to speak, constantly slipping away from his hands, constitutes his only happiness and anguish.

He who did not know the agony of the unknown will not understand the pleasures of discovery, which, of course, are stronger than all that a person can feel ”(1866, p. 64).

From the memoir literature it also follows that emotion, lyrical mood or inspiration contribute to the creative imagination, fantasy, as bright, numerous images, thoughts and associations arise easily in the mind.

Discussing the connection between thinking and emotions, some psychologists go to extremes. So, A. Ellis (Ellis, 1958) argues that thinking and emotions are so closely connected with each other that they usually accompany each other, acting in the cycle of cause-and-effect relationships, and in some (although almost all) relationships are essentially the same, so thinking turns into an emotion, and emotion becomes a thought. Thinking and emotions, according to this author, tend to take the form of self-talk or inner sentences; sentences that people say to themselves are or become their thoughts and emotions.

As for the transformation of thoughts into emotions and vice versa, this is a rather controversial statement. Another thing is that, as Ellis writes, thought and emotion are hardly possible to distinguish and isolate in their pure form. Here you can agree with the author.

A special role belongs to emotions in various types of art. KS Stanislavsky (1953) said that of all three mental spheres of a person — mind, will, and feelings — the latter is the most “difficult to bring up child." The expansion and development of the mind is much easier to the will of the actor than the development and expansion of the emotional sphere. Feeling, Stanislavsky noted, can be cultivated, subjugated to the will, cleverly used, but it grows very tight. The alternative “eat or not” refers most to it. Therefore, it is the most expensive for an actor. Students with moving emotions, the ability to deeply experience - this is the golden fund of the theater school. Their development is fast. At the same time, Stanislavsky complained that there were too many rational actors and stage works going from the mind.

It is important to experience emotions for the artist in the process of visual act.

V.S. Kuzin (1974) notes that if the nature (the object of the image) left the artist indifferent, did not cause any emotions, the process of the image would be passive. Many eminent artists emphasized the need for emotion, nature perception, and mood transmission: E. Manet, AK Savrasov, I. I. Levitan, V. D. Polenov, and others. I. I. Levitan said that the picture - This is a piece of nature, filtered through the temperament of the artist, and O. Roden believed that, before a copy of what the artist sees, passes through his hand, she must pass through his heart. That is why V. V. Vereshchagin once exclaimed: “... I will not write more battle paintings - that's that! I am too close to my heart to take what I write, I cry out (literally) the grief of every wounded and killed. "