Beauty and Imagination
Anyone I talk to wants a more beautiful world and yet how do we create change? It’s so interesting that we often say the same thing. We want to be able to DO something. I’ve been thinking about beauty a lot and the use of my imagination. I don’t have any answers but want to create a space for ideas to run free and maybe in the process, there will be something that comes out of it.
Sometimes, I think of beauty as coherence. In art making, there can be coherence of colors, movement, shape. Maybe that sounds like an odd word to use but in my mind, it’s about if things “fit” together - not perfection and maybe not even perfect unity but is there a part of me that says “yes!” and resonates in response. Perhaps the eyes stay in the picture longer and there is always more to come back to. Sometimes, it is as if a chime is struck and something inside answers. We often associate beauty with visuals but is not just about what we see. Beauty is in the mind, in the movement of the body, in words spoken or written - really in any form of creation. For me, beauty is the coherence of thought and action with a person’s authentic self. When a person thinks and acts in accordance with their true self or you could say higher self, there is flow, there is being. That sense of “being” is also beauty. The natural world is so easily beautiful because it effortlessly is always in accordance with itself. It flows with its own rhythms, exchanges energy with other systems, animals and plants as needed. Humans fall out of this inner coherence so easily and we often forget what living a life of flow feels like. One of the reasons why working with flower essences can be such a potent medicine is because the flowers (or trees or…) can hold their original energetic blueprint. They are not swayed by hardship or fall into despair. In this way, they offer their healing through their subtle energies to help us stay aligned in ours. I’ve been painting flowers for several years now and am finding that the imagery gets more and more potent the longer I play with it. The imagination comes alive with stories and images.
Beauty and imagination go hand in hand. A favorite author, John O’Donohue, writes in length about the imagination in his book “The invisible embrace Beauty”. It’s here as well where I start to look when the world feels out of control because I think our ability to imagine outside of where we are will be a guiding light. He writes,
The mind tends to see things in a singularly simple, divided way: there is good and bad, ugly and beautiful. The imagination, in contrast, extends a greater hospitality to whatever is awkward, paradoxical or contradictory. The German philosopher Hand-Deorg Gadamer […] said": The integrity of a society demonstrates itself in how that society engages with contradiction.” The imagination is both fascinated and stimulated by the presences that cluster within contradiction. It does not perceive contradiction as the enemy of truth; rather it sees here an interesting intensity. The imagination is always more loyal to the deeper unity of everything. It has patience with contradiction because there it glimpses possibilities. And the imagination is the great friend of possibility. It always sees beyond facts and situations, to the cluster of possibilities in which each thing is shrouded. In a sense, this is what beauty is: possibility that enlarges and delights the heart. When everything has become locked inside a dead perspective and the consensus is that a cul-de-sac has been reached, new possibility is an igniting spark. […] The Imagination offers revelation. It never blasts us with information or numbs us with description. It coaxes us into a new situation. As the scene unfolds, we find ourselves engaged in its questions and possibilities, and new revelation dawns.
I see how we’ve reached this on a macro level in society - we are at a cul-de-sac and no longer able to keep going as we have been. Our collective imagination is needed to imagine the possibilities of where we can go from here. I see this working on micro levels in my life all the time. I feel I’m at that place at the moment in some ways where a change in needed and harnessing the power of the imagination with the heart is needed instead of resorting to the information of the mind which can only take us so far.
Upcoming Events and Releases
I have a few paintings available at the moment, including “Earth Magic” which is the 18x24 inch oil on linen painting pictured earlier. Feel free to message me with any questions. I still have several other painting available at V Gallery as well. I’ll be working there every Saturday this month so if you’re local, come visit!
On April 1st, I’ll be having an open house again at my studio and then an online release on the 2nd. I’m working towards more “hirondelles” or swallows as well as some other flower imagery in clay and painting. April 1st is also a full moon and is named the “Full Pink Moon”, after the early spring blooming of wild ground phlox. Alternative names include the “Sprouting plants and shrubs moon”, “Fish moon” and “Breaking ice moon” which I just kind of love knowing.
I have a solo show coming up this summer at V Gallery on Saturday, July 18th. Anyone who can make it is invited!
Spring is on the way! Sending love in the meantime.
Alyssa