Posts Tagged ‘What Inspires You?’

In this feature, each month artists share one thing that excites them creatively.

One key piece to support healthy, productive creativity is stimulating inputs. What kinds of things stimulate the creative centers of the brain? What kind of inputs stimulate us visually? Emotionally? Spiritually? Mentally? Physically?

I’d really like to know, what’s one thing that fills your creative cup? Share with us in the comment section below.

What Inspires You?

Laureen Marchand

What inspires me?

Throughout my career as a painter, I have explored the relationship of the self to the spirit. Recently I’ve used images of dried roses to reflect on ideas related to beauty, loss, and the passage of time. There are some lines in a 1980s song by Leonard Cohen and Jennifer Warnes, Song of Bernadette, that I think capture the part of the human spirit that inspires me most:

We’ve been around, we fall, we fly

We mostly fall, we mostly run

And every now and then we try

To mend the damage that we’ve done

Loss, beauty, time, and in a very small way, transcendence. So human.

Laureen Marchand
Website:www.grasslandsgallery.com

What Inspires You?
Vas Littlecrow Wojtanowicz

Whenever I enter my studio, I am immediately drawn to the window. I never know what awaits there.  Will it be a family of deer strolling through the pines as fresh winter snow blankets the landscape?  Perhaps, a raccoon will stare at me with curiosity from behind the glass, wondering about my activities, as flowers bloom all around.   The other day, I saw a tiny toad trying to take shelter from the rain.

My backyard is such a muse.  I can’t get enough of its gifts. Thanks to the studio window, I am able to watch the most delightful and inspirational nature show to never be broadcast on television.

My art is all the better for this amazing opportunity.

Vas Littlecrow
Website: http://vaslittlecrow.com/

In this feature, each month artists share one thing that excites them creatively.

One key piece to support healthy, productive creativity is stimulating inputs. What kinds of things stimulate the creative centers of the brain? What kind of inputs stimulate us visually? Emotionally? Spiritually? Mentally? Physically?

I’d really like to know, what’s one thing that fills your creative cup? Share with us in the comment section below.

What Inspires You?
Jonnie Chrystal

What inspires me?

I am inspired these days by animals. Birds occupied a lot of my time last year. Horses seem to be up at the moment. And I am working in pastels, so my work is becoming more and more painterly, a look I like a lot. Don’t like to get too tight or prissy. Also work hard to give the animals their own aspect and not project any coyness onto them. I’ll leave that to the greeting card folks. 

Jonnie Chrystal

Blog: http://cowwoman.blogspot.com

What Inspires You?
Sioux George

I am inspired by the places we visit. Volcanic stone used in mosaics in Azores. Detail in ancient structres in Scotland. Advertising signs in Dublin. Chain mail and armor detail in the Tower of London. Man hole covers, doorways, and wandering the streets in Honfleur, France.

Sioux George

http://gourdette.com/

In this feature, each month artists share one thing that excites them creatively.

One key piece to support healthy, productive creativity is stimulating inputs. What kinds of things stimulate the creative centers of the brain? What kind of inputs stimulate us visually? Emotionally? Spiritually? Mentally? Physically?

I’d really like to know, what’s one thing that fills your creative cup?

If you’d like to be part of this feature, send an email to info@themindfulartist.com. Include a sentence or two about one of your key inspirations. Please include some photos – either to illustrate your inspiration, to share your artwork with us. We especially love pictures of YOU! We want to feature YOU and your work so please send a link to your blog or website or flicker page.

What Inspires You?
Candace Pryor

What inspires me?

Lately, I’ve been inspired by African-American male presenting lesbians. Before I explain what that means, I’ll give a little insight on who I am.

For a long, long time I hid my sexuality for the usual reasons (shame, fear, internal turmoil, etc) Though I’m over that, I’ve never put my sexuality into my work and so I’ve started drawing and painting African-American lesbians.

I love everything about gender-bending women who present themselves as more male than female to the public. They are my inspiration and I hope to honor the many things that they are, visually.

CandacePryor aka ARTacrobat, Raleigh, NC
Website: http://www.wix.com/artacrobat/candace#!home|mainPage
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/ARTacrobat

What Inspires You?
Ann Holsberry

One of the things that inspires me is old found papers I gather when I travel to other countries. My use of them in my art is not about sentimentality for the past; rather these ephemera evoke for me a feeling of the passage of time. I often use them with encaustic which provides both protection and a luminous veiled quality.

I am pleased that my work will be featured in an E-book, Encaustic and Paper: Twenty International Artists which will be published this year.

This is a photo of me in my studio with some old papers and French Notebook, one of my works in the background.

Ann Holsberry, Watsonville, CA
Website: http://www.annholsberry.com

In this feature, each month artists share one thing that excites them creatively.

One key piece to support healthy, productive creativity is stimulating inputs. What kinds of things stimulate the creative centers of the brain? What kind of inputs stimulate us visually? Emotionally? Spiritually? Mentally? Physically?

I’d really like to know, what’s one thing that fills your creative cup?

If you’d like to be part of this feature, send an email to info@themindfulartist.com. Include a sentence or two about one of your key inspirations. Please include some photos – either to illustrate your inspiration, to share your artwork with us. We especially love pictures of YOU! We want to feature YOU and your work so please send a link to your blog or website or flicker page.

What Inspires You?
Josie Rodriguez

I am often inspired by the obscure or the ordinary, sometimes the everyday.

I honestly think that artists see things differently. I have never imagined that I would ever call myself an artist but here I am creating and making art. When I see something that inspires me, my mind moves in a methodical way, and I begin to write down or sketch ideas. It is an exciting moment and I love how I feel when that happens.

Just today I thought of an idea. I noticed that my body went into a sort of meditative state. I felt calm and quiet and very focused. This especially happens when I create an artist book or assemblage.

There is a quote that says, Creativity Takes Courage. I believe that to be true for me as I take an idea and move it through the process until completion no matter how crazy it seems. Visually I am stimulated by the many designs of nature, emotionally by the events of the world, spiritually by the creativity of others, mentally by what I read or think about.

Josie Rodriguez, San Diego, CA
www.josierodriguez.com
http://josierodriguezartblog.blogspot.com/

What Inspires You?
Carol D. Smith

What inspires my figurative art? The joy that comes from those one-of-a-kind life connections to the spirit, energy, and emotional vibes my subjects transmit. But what about landscapes or still lifes? Connect to the stream of ideas or memories evoked by the scene.

While painting my violin handed down to me from my mother, I visualized my mother as a child playing this same violin, and with this connection, my brushstrokes danced!

Carol Smith, California