As a mostly self taught artist, my inner knowings about how to create artistically largely come from my own experimentation. This can be a good thing and a bad thing. I execute ideas quickly, without too much thought or planning. I don’t have an inner voice coaching me through the formal process which might inhibit my willingness to complete something. (I loathe long projects and do not have much patience when I paint, apparently this is written in the stars for me as I am a manifesting generator in human design, IYKYK). When I have taken formal painting classes, this formality of the painting usually also accompanies growing feelings of dread toward the work. In an effort to keep my art practice light and enjoyable I try to avoid the formality of classical painting and any hard and fast rules.
I have no idea how other artists work or come up with their ideas. This is kind of mine though.
A lot of my inspiration comes from a mood and builds upon images I’ve seen. In Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way, she refers to this as the bank, which needs to be constantly filled with more imagery as inspiration. For example, my dots series from 2022 are directly influenced by a friend mentioning Damien Hirst, which prompted me to research his works, see his spots, and shortly thereafter morphed my lollipop-like flowers into grids of color swirls.
This series went on for a while, and was very well received, but after cranking out a few I was disappointed with, I realized I lost the magic in it and it was time to move on. I might go back and revisit this series one day, we’ll see.
Similarly, a painting in the background of an instagram story caught my eye one day. I followed the link to the page for the gallery she tagged, tracked down previously tagged images until I found one where someone had tagged the artist, whose name is Günther Förg. Of course the artist doesn’t appear to have an instagram, but I found several more pieces of his. The colored scribbles, like a child testing out crayon colors, or an extremely pixelated meadow - I immediately thought of my dots, my “flowers”, and how I wanted to paint impressionistic, drippy swirly versions of them.
While researching images of Günther Förg for this post, I came across a really cool instagram where they tell the story of HIS inspiration for these. How fascinating! It was inspired by the act of wiping off a paintbrush.
The image of Günther Förg’s work combined with an antique painter’s palette I saw at a flea market in Paris ultimately inspired a series of painterly abstracts based on bouquets.
I usually stay in a series until I am no longer feeling the magic that I started with. Usually my first tries at any given series are my favorites and the subsequent works that follow fall short of the first ones. As my art practice is only a few years old, I still feel like I am feeling my way in the dark to where I am ultimately going to go.
My latest inspiration is a blend of these abstract florals which almost don’t even look like florals, and the Flemish master’s paintings of supernaturally blooming paintings. I’m currently experimenting with looser forms and melty color blending while still working within a more formal composition.
I am loving watercolor as a medium, since I can start and stop without much prep or clean up. This has been huge for my art practice. One of my favorite things about watercolor is that it looks completely different once dried than it did while wet. I love that.
This summer I have been moving into even looser renditions, on larger paper. We will see where this takes me!
Cheers,
A