The Imagination Is A Great Kaleidoscope
Posted by Michael Scott on June 7, 2011
“Life on this earth may be likened to a great kaleidoscope before which the scenes and facts and material substances are ever shifting and changing, and all anyone can do is to take these facts and substances and rearrange them in new combinations” ~ Napoleon Hill
In the words of King Solomon, “There is nothing new under the sun”. I suppose the same could be said of the moon. I am not the first artist in the world to be mesmerized by the mystical beauty of a moonlit night and I’m certainly not the first person to have the urge to paint such a scene. I’m also not the first person to paint a tree, a skier or a log cabin. If I can take any credit at all for the originality of my work it is due to the combination of subjects that come from an inner place of “feeling” or from my imagination.
The dictionary defines Imagination as “The faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses”. This is not to say that a painter of realism who uses reference does not use his or her imagination, not at all for the process of converting that reality to the canvas demands an imaginative mind. For me, I am finding that when I free myself from reference material as much as possible, I give my imagination or my ability to “feel” the greatest opportunity to perform.
If you watch the video posted above, you will see that this painting was totally ad lib. The only reference material used were sketches of skiers that I created with my imagination. As the composition was laid out on the canvas I put in the shape of a pond on which I was going to place ice skaters. As work on the painting progressed, the work started talking to me and it said “forget the pond, go with skiers”, so I did.
