A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

How many times has someone come up with an idea or even a name for something and I’ve said to myself ~ “wish I had thought of that,  it seems so obvious or right.”  The thing is, it wasn’t obvious or right to me before that moment because I was thinking within my own spectrum of possibilities.  Rather than allowing my mind to explore, I was ready to jump to conclusions that worked before or weren’t that far out of my habitual thinking.

As an artist, I am forever challenged by creating new images using the same medium.  It’s amazing to me how many permutations I can come up with in size, shape, color and form when I have kept my mind open to fresh ideas.  These ideas might not even have anything to do with the project at hand but they have been percolating and turning around in my mind ~ a photograph, a quote, a song, a page from a magazine.  The source isn’t important.  What’s important is my being open to the free flow of possibilities.

This is true in everything we do.  Thinking outside our proverbial little boxes opens us up to new ways of seeing and new ways of creating.  It expands our world, and in turn, expands our relationships, our work, our zest for life.