Posts tagged ‘inspiration’
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I have always heard you should carry a notebook around to write down things that inspire you. That probably works well for writers. I try to keep a camera handy for colors and compositions that excite me. Without a doubt the long cold winter that FINALLY seems to have ended also inspired this new painting and its color-palooza. I’m ready for the sun to warm things up and bring life back to the world around me.
Nothing is more annoying than when people post on facebook, twitter, or their blog about how AMAZING the weather is. It’s annoying for a couple reasons.
1. Weather is boring. True fact; it’s exactly what you talk about when you don’t know what else to talk about. It’s right up there with what you ate for lunch. Snooze.
2. Sharing your weather related experiences is really just a cover for your will to tell people that you got out into the world and experienced something that everyone else didn’t. Bragger.
Now that I got that out of my system….Have you been outside lately? Oh…my….goodness is October the best month ever or what? There’s the changing leaves, the cooler temps…the sunny gorgeous days like walking through a scene from a Hallmark movie…only to be followed by the gray gloomy wind gusting days out of a Time Burton movie. Both equally worth sharing about.
Earlier this week I took a walk and I felt like I was in a snow globe of perfect-ville-mc-gloriousness with all the huge walnut trees turning a sunny yellow and blowing around like a ticker-tape parade.
The next day it was dreary. The wind died, the sun hid, the temperature took a nose dive…It was perfect for staying in and finishing a book and a painting. If that’s not the best week ever I don’t know what is.
What did people do before cell phone cameras? Or digital cameras for that matter. I mean, did we wander the world noticing beautiful things and simply commit them to memory? Stupid little things like a leaf on a wind shield… the shadow of your dog…a really great home made pizza…how did we record such non-events?
In a book about writing I remember one suggestion for finding and recording inspiration was carry note cards and a pencil to take notes on good ideas or observations that appear at inopportune times. The book was written before the term “smart phone” was invented.
I think the note card system is sound advice. As a painter I think my camera phone is my note card and pencil. It’s with me all the time. It’s so handy for just about anything that piques my interest…good or bad.
Several weeks ago I forgot to bring my lunch to work and bought the “chef” salad from my cafeteria. The lettuce was brown and soggy. Very slimy. I took a picture, but I’ll spare you.
Later I had a work-related meeting at an art college. You have to see the bathroom doors:
In case you don’t have eagle vision that’s a sign on the ladies room door about not putting paint down the drain. What…..so….. is it cool if they dump the paint down the men’s room drains?
An-ee-way I just thought it interesting to come to the conclusion that I am using my 21st century skill (carrying an electronic device in my pocket that governs my life) to find creative inspiration for things I may want to paint some day.
For now, I shy away from painting gross salads and stupid bathroom signs. Back to that leaf on the wind shield …I was on to something with that…
*If you want to know what book about writing I am talking about don’t think just buy this.
Perhaps less a secret and more imaginative garden….
I don’t know what it’s like in your neck of the woods but here in the Midwest it is full on springtime. The allergies are flare’n up, rain every other day, the trees are blooming like it’s mid-April up in here and I’m craving spring time food and outdoor projects. This year I hope that I can become truly obsessive about starting a garden. My backyard is huge. It’s got two giant walnut trees, two decks, some kind of pine-tree thing, and even a raised flower bed currently over-run by weeds. And for the past two years that we’ve lived here it has sat lonely with no real character. But plenty of dog poo.
It’s time to change all that so I did what any person in need of inspiration does and got on the Pinterest. I even started a garden wish list board to imagine the greatest backyard I could have ever hoped for.
So help me out folks, what have you learned about gardening? I’m sure I’ll make some newbie mistakes. Share your wisdom with me. Or direct me to a place of backyard genious-ness. Please. I’m desperate.
Earlier this week a friend asked me about painting. She wondered if I sit down and do one painting at a time, start to finish. I told her no, not all the time, rarely, etc. I told her that part of my routine is to do several paintings all at once, moving from one to another as I wait for parts to dry. I told her that I have this great set up where my studio is off my kitchen so I can be making dinner and find a few minutes here and there to start and stop painting whenever I choose. Then I went home and realized that was a bunch of bull.
Not entirely. That’s how I used to do it. Before I became bored and fickle about my interest in artmaking. But it was silly to stop. It’s like stopping exercise, or cleaning. Things fall apart when you don’t keep up the routine. I know everyone takes a break here and there but I could tell it was time for the ol’ kick in the pants. So to stay true to my friend I went back to work like I normally do; small, many, cute, colorful, fun, not too serious, not too ridiculous…
Just right. For me. What’s your creative comfort zone like?
You might think that closing my Etsy shop (er, I mean putting it on “vacation”) has given me oodles of time to hone my cooking skills and while the food is roasting I might churn out piles of paintings. I thought that’s how it would work too! But by golly I have been much less productive in the food and art department since the 2012 shut down. I have, however, been Pinterest-ing my home like a certified CRAZY person; a tension rod here, some double sided tape there, and oila! My house is not just functional but organized in ways I never imagined.
Seriously, I actually have a yogurt container wrapped in scrapbook paper adhered to my bedside wall so I can better reach my phone when the alarm goes off in the morning. Lock me up and throw away the key.
BUT tonight the spark came back to me. You see food and art are so closely related that I can’t hardly separate the two forms of making things. Part of my will to make things comes from reading old cook books. Weird, yeah.
Read the first paragraph of my grandmother’s 7th edition of the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and tell me it doesn’t have you swooning for something tasty:
I’ll admit I’m a little kooky about this sort of thing but there’s magic in them words I tell ya. Magic that made me want to be a good plain cook, at best. Now back to reading. Oh wait….11 new pins on Pinterest…I better just peek….
