Sources of Artists' Inspiration: How I find Inspiration.

'Walking Through Colour,' acrylic on 300 gsm paper, 29 x 21 cm

I find my inspiration in many different ways. Firstly, Nature always inspires me; from childhood when I spent hours walking through fields and forests and making up names for the various spirit-worlds I felt I encountered in each place, to my current emotional connections with the land, I continue to find exciting sources for ideas in my artwork. 

Landscape is usually the starting point though not always. But as I am also part of Nature (!) I like to let my hand find imagery by allowing it the freedom to translate uncensored various aspects of landscape experiences and memories. They become a composite of emotional and physical experiences, a parallel for journeys. They are also journeys in paint, each brush stroke being part of my response to paint and changing imagery in my mind.

''Night Walk,' acrylic on 300 gsm paper, 29 x 21 cm

This week I began to make a series of small paintings on paper to gather 'clues' and elements for possible paintings. These small works always help me because I can play with forms and colours randomly and make changes quickly with thick acrylic. I have not tried to force a 'finished' painting, they are merely ideas.

'Lakes and Rivers,' acrylic on 300 gsm paper

So, I'm taking various landscape elements and forms that mean something to me and assembling them spontaneously to see what might 'work' as a larger paint 'poem'. I'm open to possibilities and once I start working on canvas, things may be discarded.

'Night Trees,' acrylic on 300 gsm paper, 29 x 21 cm

At the same time, to widen my creative 'pool,' I am also working on canvas between 4 different paintings. I think I see the small works as an enquiry in to possible forms that could then enter troublesome, unresolved areas of the canvases. Recently I have trodden a line between several lines of enquiry in new canvases, some more landscape referenced, some more towards paint and abstraction. 

To be continued.

'Mountain Trails,' acrylic on 300 gsm paper, 29 x 21 cm

How Important is an Artist's Statement? and Some Painting Ideas

This is something I wrote on Facebook today which I found quite helpful when thinking about the new series of work I'm about to start even though it relates to the above painting:
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'MUCH OF MY ARTWORK explores the overlapping of meanings of things felt and seen and my reflections on them. Often I overlap landscape and still life elements to convey the sense that everything is connected and feelings are a fluid stream though may appear separate from moment to moment. This is why I chose to paint various elements and shapes as incidents across green (possible landscape reference), and some of the shapes are ambiguous but embedded in that green. 

It is also about my love of landscape, the scents, the sounds, the changing appearances from day to day but within an eternal cycle of seasons, our traces across the world and thoughts made concrete as shapes. Within that world are many overlapping words that co-exist. As I create, I am also Nature.
This was worked over and over until I found a title came in to my mind and that directed the end game.
'Daytime in a Jug,' acrylic and ink on canvas, 40 x 40 cm (2018)

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I've always found it helpful to constantly evaluate what I'm doing as an artist and to reassess the elements I'm working with. The thing is to be open to changes and seeing new ways forwards. 

'Colourama,' oil on wood, 35 x 45 cm

For the rest of this post I'm attaching a few older works which I'm looking back to before starting this new work. Some elements I want to re-introduce back in to my painting are some looser forms, more exploration of colour, more simplicity, less total complexity running from edge to edge. I quite like the fluidity of being able to look back to older work and learn from it because I see it as widening the spiral of my creative process. I also like the coherence that working with thick oil paint can bring to a painting. Each of the paintings posted has something, some aspect, I want to keep in mind.

At the same time, I want to express my love of Nature and those reflections on life experiences while also using my natural tendency to calligraphy and drawing with a brush. My feelings flow down through the brush and often my spontaneous impulses with that brush can finish a painting.

'Escape From Winter,' oil on board, 60 x 45 cm

'My Place,' oil on canvas, 35 x 45 cm

'After the Long Hard Winter it was Time for a Picnic,' oil on board, 35 x 55 cm

How Important is Knowing an Artist's Intention When Looking at a Painting? (part 2)

'Lost Paradise: Tears For Burrswood,' acrylic on canvas, 50 x 60 cm

I'm posting 2 new paintings and one work in progress. They have a message behind them which I feel it might be important for viewers to know. I don't believe it will spoil their enjoyment of the paintings, if they had attached a different meaning to them, but as the impetus for the first 2 paintings has a highly personal meaning, it seems to be an integral part of the image.

The first one, above, is about a place I loved and which has now gone in to receivership. I first went to Burrswood when I was 17 as my father had just got a job as Public Relations Officer there. It was at that time being promoted as a faith healing centre and my sister had a miraculous healing from Leukaemia there.  Some years later the place became a place for people to stay, as respite for ill people or just to enjoy the peace of the huge grounds, forests and lakes. There is also a beautiful church and I often used to sit in it feeling the quietness. Often I would go to the cafe which had a view down to the lake and distant hills.

I painted there every week over an 8 year period, seeing the trees grow, seeing the change of the seasons with their minute differences from year to year, breathing in all the scents, and always loving the wild orchids that grew near one of the lakes. 

I found out about a month ago that this place, which has occupied much of my life in one way or another, has now closed. My painting is about remembering paths, seasons, flowers, the lakes, and my deep sorrow. It was about wondering what will happen now? Will it all be destroyed as money dictates that flats should be built on the land? The church also destroyed?

It has been a heavily reworked painting and as I seemed to feel there was so much to say, the best thing is now to start another painting. While working on this, I was also exploring my ongoing ideas about colour, composition, (how much to include, where to include it, what could be left out), and how to make an image that respects paint as well as the initial inspiration. Once I start to paint, I walk a line between the original inspiration and what the paint is pushing me to say.

'Spartans Shields Returning Home in the Rain,' acrylic on canvas, 40 x 50 cm

This second painting, which was painted over an older work, is a bit of a strange one! My inspiration was the thought that people's lives often pass through many struggles with courage that is unseen. I thought of the Spartans and their saying 'Return with your shield or on it,' Their shields were emblems of courage and honour and this is why my abstract landscape - which has elements from my 14 years in Cyprus - includes shields. It was quite an intense painting with all kinds of thoughts going through my head at the time and also I wanted the paint to show the traces of my feelings through the brush marks. It is also about the passage of life, the certainty that you can not go back only forwards.

'Throwing Pebbles in the Lake While the Moon Rises,' acrylic on canvas, 50 x 60 cm

The final painting I am posting is one from my moon series. It grew out of my imaginings of being by a lake, usually with pine trees and distant views of mountains, and having the time to sit and throw pebbles in the rippling water while the moon rises. This is imagery I visualise when I'm falling asleep, it's where I would like to be! I liked the idea of the moon changing through different colours, as it does in Cyprus, and I don't feel that the composition is yet there. 

I don't believe all paintings need to be explained. They should greet the viewer with a certain kind of completeness, but when there is an intense message behind them, it can enhance any interested viewer's appreciation of the work to find out more.