Creativity and Art

It is a constant question for me , is there beauty in striving for realism or is their beauty in dreaming up your art? What I mean is , as an artist I have always craved perfection, and I think even as an audience , we offer compliments like " Oh this is real, or so exactly similar, or the flower looks realistic...."

While I adored and sought out such compliments early on , as I grew creatively I have found the need to step outside of these . I realize there is as much complexity in building and making work out of ones own imagination and thoughts as much as trying to recreate something realistically , at the cost of sounding biased I would say fighting one's built in mindsets and building abstract work required to go an even extra mile.

And honestly to each his own; creativity is such a complex and personal thing all at the same time.

What do you think about creativity?