Powerful Paintbrush Visualizations -Kerry

"Creativity is grounded in reality, in the particular, the focused, the well observed, or specifically imagined," Julia Cameron, "The Artist's Way."

I pondered that phrase this morning as I navigated a crowded aisle and honed in on a small turquoise pillow for $3.99 that I had been imagining, well, more like obsessing, about at the new Ikea store in Portland. It had to be that exact turquoise pillow, nothing I could find at Target or Fred Meyer in Medford would do. For two months now I have been visualizing color schemes and furniture layouts for our new vacation rental house project. My forays into Craigslist and Goodwill were reliable (this week's score was three bamboo bar stools), but I needed something more.

Since I currently reside in a place with a limited shopping selection , compared to, say, Portland or San Francisco, I have taken up visualization and imagination as the next best thing. I visualized redoing our vacation house rental in Palm Springs Chic or Zen Retreat. Then I moved onto completely white and black furnishings (stark, but hip), and then onto sort of a 1960's cocktail lounge look. Of course, these scenes all existed in my imagination, give or take a few pieces of bamboo. In short, I have been so focused in my mind with pictures of well-coiffed rooms ripped from the latest copy of Wallpaper Magazine that I have almost driven through stop signs (thank God for screaming children as an alarm) and nearly backed over our cat as I daydreamed about paint chip colors.

Clearly, for the safety of all involved, I needed to gently bring myself into the present moment and get on with the project. Which brings me to where I find myself now, firmly ensconced at my parents' home with my youngest daughter where I am literally yards away from the house. Most of my writing lately has taken the form of extensive to-do lists I prepared with phrases like, "Paint wall mustard yellow like the room in Sunset," followed by a page long detail of how and what I will need to achieve this effect. The visualization of the room seems to be the primary goal here for me, whether or not I actually achieve it seems to be irrelevant, since I've already achieved it in my head. However, because I have a timeline that includes when I have to complete the project, these powerful visualizations must give way to powerful paintbrush strokes. Which is fine with me, because that gives me more time to imagine.