Imagination in Action

This book is a collection of essays and articles by Canadian painters and sculptors, musicians and composers, poets and novelists and journalists. Teachers, choreographers, actors, book-store owners, cooks, farmers, needle-workers...

Creative folks discuss what they do, and why, and how they do it. Apparently there’s not one correct way. Forget those how-to books. Find your own method. You too can be creative.

Writers write. Painters paint. Composers compose. All we creatures groping, learning the world whatever way we can; using pens, paintbrushes, musical instruments, whatever we have.

Trying to understand the world and our place in it; to bring order out of chaos; to figure out who we are, where we are, what we are doing here. Sometimes trying to communicate with others. Who are you? What are you doing? Here’s what I’ve been creating. This is my version of the world. Is it the same as yours?

What in the world do non-artists do? How do they manage to figure out the world? Don’t they need to make sense of things, create order? Is it possible that they already understand the world? If so, how come?