Inspiration - I could talk about it for hours, yet I could never comprehend all aspects of it in one article. We can look at inspiration from various angles. Today's angle is the interconnectedness of inspiration sources, subconscious and conscious, and how they sublime to result in an actual piece of work.
Okay, there are times when I feel empty, I'm running on the treadmill of routine, my mind is packed with due dates and chores, but when I want to place the pen on the paper and draw a line, the line leads nowhere.
But then there are these beautiful, beautiful days, sometimes even stretches of days, when I am utterly inspired by everything around me. When everything I see, hear, experience, read, write, draw - prompts me to create something else, something new out of it. Those days, I can just collect future painting ideas like one collects fruits in the beginner level of a retro arcade game. I write them down when I can. I have about 10 painting ideas pending, just awaiting their day when I am ready to create them.
Some days, an inspiration strikes me instantly, I can put down the brush, and start painting away, and it looks spectacular, and the inspiration just flows and flows.
Music & painting
When I paint, I usually listen to music, it carries me further and makes me enjoy the process more - even the frustrating bits where you mess up your work and have to do the part all over again. I believe that music really influences the outcome of my painting, that's why I sort of match music to the mood of the painting. One day, I was painting a bright watercolour painting, an illustration for an album cover (that project kind of failed, that's the bitter experience I have), but I listened to grim/mysterious tunes by Anna Calvi, and the painting turned out unexpectedly somber, and weird. Unwillingly, I had turned the guy's skin into Frankenstein's.
I don't remember the music I was listening to when painting this one. It was 4 years ago, and I surprised myself with the outcome of this. It was one of the first serious oil pastel paintings (started as sth not so serious, AT ALL). I remember the process - how carried away I was, how amazed by the miraculous illusion of paint strokes.
Photo taken around October 2014, see the early version of my signature.
I vaguely remember the image source, but I remember what I felt like I was capturing - a person breathing in freedom. I don't even think there is a gender to this face. It is just a face, its natural features embellished by a sheen of fantasy (like I do with oil pastel). But that face breathes. It is inhaling. And you know what it might be inhaling? (It just all comes together nicely, like pieces of a puzzle) Inspiration.
After all.. the origin of word inspiration is Latin/Old French, from c. 1300 inspiracion: "inhaling, breathing in; inspiration", in the holy scripts: "immediate influence of God or a god".
Sometimes you get out the meaning of your art a bit later in life
I really like the notion of breathing and inspiration. I think, our bodies are able to achieve so much especially through breathing. And we breathe all the time. So needed, so unnoticed.
I think, for me at the time, I was breathless for expressing myself. Inspiration rarely found me, maybe because I was rarely looking for it, maybe I was unripe, unwilling... Definitely, comparing to who I am now, I was much more restricted in my views, in the frame of my mind. I will tell you about it some day. It's sort of exciting to reveal to you how I've changed, even if you haven't had met me back then.
Inspiration finds me again
The scanned version, with my newest trademark signature. See, the colors are a bit different because the scanner is a bit harsher on the colours.
I'm looking at this painting, remembering how I felt, and I think I can add more to it - to the entangled source of inspiration of this painting. There is the face, there are my feelings, the music I was listening to at the time, the other paintings I had seen - all in all, everything, mixed up into the lines that form the breathing face in this painting.
I think I will find the way how this painting will inspire another one in the future. Something about breathing, air, freedom, feathers...
I thought about it when I was listening to this song. These lines are really beautiful:
You are airborne
You've got silver rays
Hope inspiration finds you today, pals!