The art of imagination

Scientific studies of visual imagery, well represented in this Special Issue, tend to focus on our capacity to 'see' things in the mind's eye in their absence. Yet the visual imagination, as described and used by practising artists, is a much richer and more complex ability, cultivated by artistic training, strongly linked to personality and emotion and often exercised in the act of creation rather than a passive 'visualising'. This Viewpoint complements the scientific studies represented here by reporting the thoughts and views of a number of artists on their own experience of visual imagination and is illustrated by a series of works that exemplify the output of the author's.