My Imaginative Terrain

My Imaginative Terrain Revisited

From my unconscious to the conscious, through endless memories, emotions, symbols and images, I mold tradition with my own hands.

The first course I took when beginning my Masters degree was entitled Educating through Artistic Themes and Processes. Professor Hoogland encouraged creativity and artistic responses to the weekly assignments. Although my undergrad degree had been in visual arts, I had barely picked up a paintbrush in seventeen years. My artistic drought was about to end.

The articles found in the course section called Mapping your Imaginative Terrain triggered a visual response that woke a dormant need in me to create. One such article was Creativity, the Arts and the Renewal of Culture (1989) by Peter Abbs.

Abbs discusses the vertical axis of creativity as being the movement between the conscious and the unconscious. He states that for creative thinking to happen “one must step sideways out of the track set by logic and downwards into the unconscious” (p.10, 1989). Yet I would not “step” as Abbs suggests with my feet. It was a journey I would take with and through my hands. The painting process, I knew, would allow me to take the trip from conscious to unconscious and from experience to symbol. I would become reacquainted with the knowledge that “the artist knows through sight and through feel” (Eisner, 1998, p. 48).

For these reasons, my hand became the focal point of the painting that I would call, My Imaginative Terrain.

Abbs also speaks of another axis of creativity. This one is horizontal. It considers the relationship between inherited culture, symbols or traditions and innovation. Abbs states that anything we create is in part based on something we have seen or experienced (Abbs, 1989, p. 18).

Many of the experiences that have impacted on me physically, emotionally and spiritually, have come to me through my hands. Music, nature, my heritage and dreams drift between my fingers. Abbs quotes Wagner in his article who stated that “the stream of life was not to flow to me from without, but from within.” (Abbs, 1989, p.14). The water flows from my hand right off the page imitating the way that creative thoughts flow when one is inspired. My hands are the conduits through which my creativity moves. Merleau Ponty suggests that the artist’s hand becomes an instrument that like a conductor brings a sort of electrical current and spark from the outside world to that world of vision within (1994).

I wanted to explore both of Abbs’ axes in my painting and as I looked at my hand, I saw that both were firmly etched in my palm. My heart line and life line became visual representations of the axes Abbs spoke to me of. Both were wrapped around my paintbrush as I began to stroke the paper with colours from within.

The final addition to the painting was to add a narrative section along the border since writing is also a creative outlet that I explore. Around the edge of the painting I printed, “Which direction do I go to find my imaginative terrain?” My answer was one that I continue to explore and contemplate. It is how I began this reminiscence and it is where my journey once again ends. “From my unconscious to the conscious through endless memories, emotions, symbols and images, I mold tradition with my own hands.”

Marlene Lee

My Imaginative Terrain (Watercolour), 2000


Bibliography


Abbs, P. (1989). Creativity, the arts and the renewal of culture. A is for aesthetic: Essays on creative and aesthetic education. New York, NY: The Falmer Press.

Eisner, E. (1998). The kinds of schools we need: Personal essays. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1994). Eye and mind. In S.D. Ross (Ed.), Art and its significance: An anthology of aesthetic theory. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.