“Most creative people alternate fluently between imagination and fantasy, and a rooted sense of reality.”
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi quoted in “Why Creative People Sometimes Make No Sense“, 3 Nov 2013
If you believe this isn’t you, could never be you, then answer this question: Do you never see things in the shapes of clouds, never think “that cloud there looks like an X?”
Do you never look at a rainbow, follow it to where it touches the ground and think about the pot of gold and luck? Yes, indeed, you can never get to a rainbow’s end because it’s merely refracted light. Yes, if Newton hadn’t had beliefs around seven it wouldn’t be ROYGBIV but ROYGBV, yet we can still try to see indigo.
Embracing the imaginative does not mean living in cloud cuckoo land or lessen your grip on reality or undermine your intelligence or mean you can’t draw realistically or any of the other slights thrown out by dullards. Running with imagination invites joy, possibilities, absurdities, selections. You’re not forgetting where the ground is to anchor yourself but choosing to ignore it for a bit.
I never cease to be enthused by the fact that in nature, particularly where weather is involved, every conceivable colour is there in front of you. Nature is never wrong and these colours are all arranged in to shapes and if you look carefully you can pick the shapes out into thirds, or the golden mean or the 1 , 2 , 3 , 5 , 8, 13, 21, etc of life. When you are standing admiring a particular view, try turning round and viewing what’s behind you. All of what you see is affected by light. And have you noticed how the colours in nature are all muted, they are never glossy, primary colours. All of this gives me a lot of pleasure and fires my enthusiasm
The more we look the more we see!