Permission to imagine
Have you ever wanted to dive into a painting? Trust that impulse.
“And by this time either they had grown much smaller or the picture had grown bigger. Eustace jumped to pull it off the wall and found himself standing on the frame; in front of him was not glass but real sea, and wind and waves rushing up to the frame as they might to a rock.”
So begins the adventures of Lucy, Edmund and Eustace in C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. A painting on the wall engulfs the three children and pulls them into Narnia. (Are there others who, at one time, wondered if that’s why viewers weren’t allowed to get too close to certain paintings on display in museums?) As early as I can remember, Lewis’ imaginative storytelling about trees that fight and lions that talk was one of several influences that fed my curiosity about the world beyond.
Creative immersion
Yet, the idea of being in a painting feels less like fiction these days. In recent years, our family has enjoyed visiting immersive light exhibits where people are bathed in a kaleidoscope of colour through projection mapping, LED arrays, motion sensors and spatial audio, creating a multisensory experience. One favourite was Immersive Van Gogh, hosted in Toronto, where the warehouse walls were covered with sunflowers, starry nights and irises. The arrangement of the colour and motion made it seem as if the famous paintings were being re-created around us. Certainly, the mechanics behind the production were quite technical, but the experience left us in awe of what felt like magic.
I’m reminded of the different ways creative thinking has nudged new ideas and enlarged the world for those impacted by a disability. Over a hundred years ago, Anne Sullivan taught Helen Keller to imagine a version of the world through touch. Today, for our family, because Rachel and Janneke cannot actively touch the world, we’ve intentionally tried to fill it with sound and light. It is with pure delight that we watch Rachel and Janneke take in the immersive light show, eyes wide open and fingers stretched as if to feel the colourful animation.
Creative gift
Offering less enchantment but no less inspiration, I had the chance to attend Calvin University’s Festival of Faith and Writing last month. I particularly enjoyed listening to author Lanta Davis speak about the power of what we behold and its ability to shape us. In her book, Becoming by Beholding: The Power of the Imagination in Spiritual Formation, Davis writes, “We should not fall into the trap of treating the imagination – one of the greatest gifts we have received as human beings – mainly with fear rather than hope . . . the surest, deadliest way to stifle and shrivel the soul is [by] starving the imagination.”
While we likely won’t find a magic painting portal to another world, we look forward to feeding that sense of wonder with our girls this summer, reminding ourselves of the Creator’s gift of imagination.
