Title: Creative Visualization
Author: Valerie Martin
Publisher: Opal Tree
Date: 2016
ISBN: 978-1919636368
Quote: "This book is intended for inspiration purposes only, for people who have an interest in developing their creative practice."
A classic work of its era called Creative Visualization was published in 1978. For this mini-book to be released under the same title invites comparisons. Not all of the comparisons are unfavorable--the author known as Shakti Gawain had to spend more time selling the idea of "creative visualization" than guiding visualization exercises, and did not, in fact, include more exercises in her full-length book than Val Martin does in this little e-book. Nevertheless: Gawain's book was groundbreaking; Martin's is a rehash, even a digest.
If you find it helpful to visualize yourself walking through beautiful landscapes and reaching insights into a "creative" project on which you're feeling blocked, here are fourteen visualization exercises. I find it interesting, and illuminating, that Julia Cameron said nothing about visualizing the walk but advised her audience of artists to do the walk. For me the visualization might be a substitute worth trying if I were laid up with an injury, but I can't say I've ever used it with success. If insights are down in the well of my unconscious mind, they rise to the surface when I apply the outside of my feet to the outside of the Earth.
At least Martin's visualizations are so pretty that they're likely to suggest a lovely romance, or reconciliation, or some sort of happy-ending scene for a novel, or a landscape for a feel-good painting.
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