What is this 'imagination'?

The basic quality that will differentiate 'normal' realistic landscape painter and one who has broken the frame, is imagination. All discussion about thought process will come to nothing, if painter lacks the imagination. Now let us understand what we mean by imagination. ( Those who have it need not read further). It is not only visualization. Visualization is more in the realm of illustrating or depicting. What you have seen before or based on your previous visual stimuli, you can 'recreate' a picture which provides visual idea to the viewer. And in this exercise reality is the boundary. What you visualize should seem 'real'; not just plausible but also possible. A skillful landscape artist may visualize well. He/she may be a better painter than one who can just reproduce. Painter who reproduces from the spot or photo, may even deviate from the scene, yet she is dependent on the source for material. In many our previous discussions, we have gone in various facets of basic copy vs inspired deviations. All said; they all are still interpretations.

Visualizing goes a step further but still it remains somewhat inside realm of depiction . And painter who visualizes a scene need not and should not keep anything unsaid. i.e. to imagination. and we all say this often " don’t consider your viewers as fools, they have got some imagination!" Well said. It is quite obvious and taken for granted quality, in viewer of abstract and conceptual art. And this 'required' quality of the audience of those genres, give them somewhat exalted status of serious and evolved genres? Where did landscape go wrong? Or is still going wrong?

First, though many landscape painters in India do talk about poetic quality and lyrical feel to their works, (and matching Indian poets in praising each others like in kavi sammelans) they do show evident lack of imagination. They are like 'tukbands' who revel only in wordplay.. the real quality of poet is absent....that of imagination. I am not talking of landscapes of Mars or some fantasy world. Please don’t misunderstand. Imagination which we expect on the part of viewer, will merit its existence, only when artist shows them in her paintings. And this imagination is of all things out of area of depiction n skill. Dazzling and creating awe/ questions, about brushwork n technique is not challenging his imagination. The viewer will get dazzled this way, entirely due to his lack of knowledge of this field or her lack of exposure to similar other paintings. Few times after he has seen such works, there is nothing to imagine.. study may be, but surely nothing to imagine.

So what is this imagination? Try to imagine! It may be about radical composition or play of shapes n forms. It can also be of impossible angel; impossible at least in normal ways. Or while taking help of known realist forms and objects, showing a rebellious way of expression. Rebellious not only in choice of material, colors and subjects, but also in touching many of boundaries. Either in minimal rendering, distortion or simplifying and still making it mystical etc etc. But imagination does not include imagining someone's thinking; and definitely not guessing someone's skill n technique. That may be an attempt to copy or 'get inspired' or at best reverse engineering. But not imagination! Imagination comes out of your own inner journey yet remains plausible for others to think; as we are after all realistic painters!

Still if you are not able to fathom what I am blabbering about, then you may not have that quality. And yes. All of us, don’t have that ability. All adults. Children have that by default. But in growing up we lose that somewhere on the way. And that made this Marathi line famous... to preserve the childhood inside in adult life, is the motto of a poet :-)