Forming visual imageries may not be confined to humans only. It is quite likely that many other animals can also form visual imageries. In this article I will discuss about the relation between imageries created with the power of imagination and art.
The ability to form visual imageries for creative purposes been quite wide spread in paleolithic and primitive socities.
Recreating reality by rerepresenting the reality through creative expressions was well developed even in paleolithic times, as depicted through the cave paintings and carvings of that period in different parts of the planet.
The will and the urge to create something new, either for the joy of creation or to solve some problem, developed creative imagination.
Without creative imagination, not only art, but major and minor scientific inventions could not have taken place.
The dimension of imagination is endless. That dimension encompassed not only the world of the apperent, but also the hidden worlds.
As the consciousness has both the words in it generally without the person being aware of the fact, the dimension of imagination is far greater or deeper them the physical existance.
Greater the sensitivity of conscious level of the person, deeper is the power of imagination and stronger is the visual imegery.
When this power to creater new images in mind is coupled with artistic skill, original expressions of creativity are formed in the material sphere.
So, without the power to imagine, original creative expressions are not possible.
Without the power to imagine new and original images in mind, and without the ability to have well defined and spontaions visual imageries, a person can attain the skill to wield the tools of the artist and also the pictures and photographs.
Such people can be quite skilful, but they can pnly copy. At most they can change some of the composition that they are copying, but nothing more.
These people some times try to mix two or more photographs or pictures by others to create a "new" composition, but theycan not chieve the original presentation of the inner world of imagination that remoulds the outer world and rerepresents it through original creative expressions.
Such people are just copyists, artists, through they like to term themselvs as artists.
There are different levels of imaginative powers. This factor is very important. The levels of imagination may increase or decrease in life at different times.
A child, generally has a lot of imaginative powers and likes to draw and paint from imagination. Children’s imagination is usually uninhibited and free from many of the biased throughts imposed by social values.
So, these creations, if unguided and unpressurized by adults, are spontanious. The power of imagination is strongest in most people at early childhood, when the children create worlds of make believe.
There worlds of make believe are created out of unspoilt powers of imagination in childhood.
In that world of childhood dreams, material gains and loss play a very small part if any, and the imaginative powers that create the childhood world is absolutely spontanious and pure.
As the concept of material gains creeps in throufh art competitions and prizes, the spontanity and purity of that world begins to disappear.
Further on, the imposition of social values of sucess and failure bring the childhood world to its end, and imagination as an inner force dries up.
As a grown up materialistic person in the world of so called "practical" values, the childhood days with the power to create worlds of make believe are not recreated again.
Only when one is able to preserve the spontanious word of a child alive in him or her, the power imagination in creative art remains.
Yet, the real power of imagination lies in the ability to create vivid worlds within the mind. When one has faith and skill strong enough to give that world of imagination a shape in the material world, new and original creations are born.
New ways of creation, new methods of presentation and compositions, find place in the cultural history of human kind.
Without imagination, the creative world would be stagnent. Art colleges can teach skills to use tools but they can not inject any one with the power of imagination.
That power has to come from within. The reality can provide a basic structure for the imaginations to build upon.
Imagination helps to create new experimentations in art in styles, compositions and techniques. Imagination brings about new dimensions in the world of thoughts and the expressions of those thoughts in various ways, through different disciplines of art. Every form of art, whether visual, literary or performing is developed with the power of imagination.
The human soul, with sensitive consciousness, is able to dream on with the help of imagination. Dreams of a creative soul that go far beyond the common place values of gain and loss, beyond the mundane materialistic level, create a way of spiritualenlightment for that soul, and in this process, the formation of steady visual imagery with the power of imagination is vital.
In such circumstances art becomes a spiritual discipline of joy, but such a situation is possible only when there is detachment from materialistic values.
Then the metaphysical aspect of art with the promise of Eternity gains precedence over the physical one.