Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
Albert Einstein.
Imagination:
- the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.
- - the part of the mind that imagines things.
- - the ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful.
- an act or process of forming a conscious idea or mental image of something never before wholly perceived in reality by the one forming the images (as through a synthesis of remembered elements of previous sensory experiences or ideas as modified by unconscious defense mechanisms)
- the ability or gift of forming such conscious ideas or mental images especially for the purposes of artistic or intellectual creation
Creativity:
- - relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.
Knowledge deals with facts; through science, observations of actual events, etc while imagination is driven by "inventive creativity" that is, images and ideas that are not actually real, but which can present an original view of a person’s creative thinking. I believe that knowledge is also an important part of imagination, because we often use our learned knowledge to recreate, reinvent, and envision new things
Knowledge
- facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.
- awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.
Fiction - Intellectual invention
- literature in the form of prose, especially short stories and novels, that describes imaginary events and people.
Fiction as an invention or fabrication and creativity can also translate into other art forms:
Visual Invention: Art
- the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
- also the various branches of creative activity, such as painting, visual arts, music, literature, and dance.
I think that knowledge can, at times, be an important part of imagination. Creative people often use their knowledge to recreate, reinvent, and envision new things using that knowledge. Margaret Buffie
Here is just one example of one artist using his own knowledge to express his own internal image.
Jarek Yerks, The Library Dam
Quotes and art that can enlighten us about Imagination.....
"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
Mark Twain
Rene Magritte, The False Mirror
"There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds".
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Jarek Yerks, Surreal Castle in the Sky
"I saw the angel in the marble
and carved until I set him free."
Michelangelo
Michelangelo, Angel
"Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in
dreams than the imagination when awake?"
Leonardo da Vinci
Henri Rousseau, The Dream
"My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk."
John Keats
John Keats
Rembrandt, Titus as a Monk
Casper David Friedrich, The Abbey in the Oak Wood
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. William Blake
Van Gogh, The Olive Tree
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
Albert Einstein
Samy Charnine, Sea Inside
You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’
But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not’?
George Bernard Shaw
Illustration art by Beatriz Martin Vidal
