The Waiting Imagination

Ink sketch on color paper with white color pencil highlights and some later shading in Photoshop.
© O. Douglas Jennings. All rights reserved.

Sometimes an image will appear in my mind and I'll try to make a sketch based on that image.

The above sketch, that I made in 2011, is of an image that also came to me with the words "The Waiting Imagination". I can't remember what was going on in my life at the time. But in the back of my consciousness I could sense this, for lack of a better word, entity. Silent, intelligent, amused, it was watching and waiting for me to call it into activity.

Maybe I was feeling tired of my day-to-day routine. Maybe I was wanting an excuse to unleash my creativity. in any case, I feel that this image and drawing was my mind's way of saying, "Your creativity is here. It's ready when you are. Your imagination is on hand to help you in your life."

Notice there are mushrooms in the picture. Since I've never used any hallucinogenics of any kind, I think the mushrooms are symbols to me of ideas and solutions that spring up when one is not looking. It's like the way that mushrooms often grow while we're sleeping, overnight; in the dark.

Have you ever had a problem or puzzle that was unsolvable as you think and think to solve it. Then you tell your self, "l'll just sleep on it." Or, "l'll just put it on the back burner" only to, later, have the solution come to you with little or no effort?

That is the power of the waiting imagination.