Sitting here in my office, sipping my morning coffee, my eyes flick over the piles of paperwork, bills, flyers and goodness knows what else I’ve haphazardly stacked in random piles (I’m not the tidiest person in the world). I am looking for inspiration.
I want to be artistic today, I want to produce an image that is both creative and striking, one that people will not just flick their eyes over casually and move on from. I want to create a pause….for them to stop for a moment, and study the art that I have created.
The problem is though, this coffee is damn good and I am not feeling particularly inspired to uncurl from my plush office chair and move.
It’s tempting to just rework an older piece, but that’s cheating and I want to do something fresh and new. Something I haven’t done before.
Anyone who is trying to make a living from something that they create is constantly looking for inspiration and ideas that we can shape to suit our own personal style and needs. We all view the world in our own individual, unique way and what inspires us is completely different.
Street artists such as Banksy want to convey a message; they may take their inspiration from political and environmental issues that they feel strongly about. A potter, working in a little village will look at the world and nature around them and use that as their inspiration and a photographer …. well, that is the million dollar question!
Where do I draw my inspiration from? For me it’s simple yet vast – life! I take mental snapshots of places, people, situations and circumstances. I will squint my eyes, mentally crop and draw grid lines over a view, I will see a an old man sitting alone on a park bench and imagine the image in black and white, with a slight vignette.
My coffee is gone, my paperwork is still there and oh, wait I’ve just spotted the bin men emptying the rubbish bins outside….. No! That will not do! However, I have just seen my Bible poking out from my bookshelf – an idea is forming!
I have an apple in my fruit bowl, a beautifully red, shiny apple; you could call it a queen of apples. I also have an old apple tree branch that I trimmed off in a gardening frenzy last weekend. I know there is a rotting apple behind a plat pot that I was saving to throw at the next cat that I saw attempting to do its business in my garden.
This could be interesting. I have found my inspiration and I have an idea.
I will keep you posted.