All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!
—Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
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It converts to actual.
Those four words sum up the power and potential of the imagination.
Our dreams, our hopes, our desires– they all take place in our imaginations. There these concepts begin to take shape and create their own paths forward. It is in the imagination that those first tenuous steps take place that transform mere thought into reality.
Every worthwhile thing we have ever done and every aspiration we will ever have is a product of the imagination.
It is the seat of all humanly power. And it is ours if only we use it.
Dare to imagine.
I think that is what I am seeing in this new painting, an 18″ by 18″ canvas, that I call The Eye of Imagining. It’s about dreaming. About transforming that which we know and see into a form that better suits our hopes and desires.
It’s about reminding ourselves that the only limits to our potential come from not dreaming, in not allowing our imaginations to run freely.
This throttling down of one’s imagination is something of which I am as guilty as anyone. I often find myself compromising my dreams, making them smaller and less challenging because of self doubt and a lack of confidence.
And this lack of imagining makes me feel smaller as a person.
We need to dream.
We must dare to be the person we imagine ourselves to be. Dare to imagine that.
Redtree Times 