A painting is a "presentation" of the image viewed in my imagination long before I held a brush.
My imagination is wide, much more than the material reality allows to express.
I see 3D worlds made of light like the galaxies, they have movement and maybe would be more suitable for animation. But I am a painter and in order to show you what I see I have to choose one image at a time and a technique. Before painting I stop to choose one image, I freeze it, and try to figure out how to turn it into a shape that will fit a two-dimensional canvas and oil painting technic.
At this point my imagination is directed towards the limited material world: Fabric, color, up/down, perspective, composition technique and all these require a reduction of the imagination.
It used to be different. At the beginning of my journey when I was 18 I stood in front of the white page or canvas, staring and waiting for something to come up. Then I drew, until the imagination also became a blank white page. I went to Art school I sat in front of models and a landscape and there was something to draw.
Is that what painters do ?
See how many model paintings are created, how many still life paintings, how many landscape paintings. See how many products of staring at a white page there are around, the abstract and surrealist paintings. Each of them is a conscious or unconscious choice of its creator and some are beautiful and even exciting, some are not.
I also saw what’s around and then I discovered that there were also other paintings. Complex paintings that have compositions and layers that create reality. Michael Angelo, Delacroix, Botticelli, Bernini, Bruegel, Hironimus Bosch and others, how did they paint? They didn't have one model and I don't think they were just staring at a white canvas.
Here comes an element that I didn't learn of in painting school. But I did learn it in theater, and in writing and I am convinced that it also exists in design schools. Planning. At the beginning of planning, the image I create from my imagination becomes a goal and I wonder and search how I can present it to you.
So how does it happen?
There is an image. There is a desire to fulfill it. I sketch or use Photoshop and try to realize it through many photos I took, their abundance similar to the wealth of my images only that they are produced from the public space. I create a visualization. Once simulations were done, I start creating the image on canvas. drawing, preparing the color ranges on the palette, and holding the brush.
Where does the imagination go in painting?
It travels in many worlds that the medium of painting is narrow to contain, I do not give up my rich imagination and I show those interested how to travel through imagination see https://www.shaarey-hochma.co.il/post/where-does-the-imagination-travel-in-meditation-using-the-gates-of-wisdom-method
In painting I stop and curate one image, until it becomes visible in the material world, until you can see it because it is painted on the canvas.
