When I was very small my mother (a fabulous artist) and I would sometimes sit on the back step of our little home on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada and listen to the wind rustling through a gulley behind our house. My mother would paint elaborate stories of faeries and gnomes that lived in the trees and under the stones of that small canyon. I clearly envisioned all of it and began to hear the faeries playing music and singing in the wind as well. It was magic. And the beginning of a fertile imagination that now, decades later still thrives.

Watercolor for Christmas cards.

This morning while on “chat,” my daughter (a fabulous artist) and I sat discussing the joy of creating things. We turned our little discussion over and over and upside down, peering in the crevices and looking in all the tiny parts until we arrived at a satisfying (to us on this morning, at least) explanation.

Davyn, the author’s grandson (watercolour with final layer of digital paint).

The act of creating anything at all, solely from a spark of a thought … sometimes no more than a word, a colour, a musical note … and have that small, but exciting thought take root and grow in your mind’s eye until it has become an ‘Idea’! An idea that is then transformed using any myriad of materials, be it paper, glass, paint, or clay into becoming a real physical thing, is one of the most soul satisfying things imaginable.

To have that power within is a gift to be treasured. It is surely the most fabulous magic of all.