Inspiration: Inspire

Inspire is the first in a series of words made in collaboration with my friend, the calligrapher Inkywhispers.  I first connected with her many years ago when I began my first blog which was a journal where I wrote about anything and everything, including the things I made.  We have been friends for years now and our conversations often feed creativity, they inspire and we grow ideas between us.  I don't remember who came up with the idea for this collaboration, I don't think it really matters.

It was a problem to begin with, how to recreate the curving angled letters.  I sat with it for sometime, waiting for inspiration to strike.  It did, but not for this project.  A lady in a facebook group I belong to asked for a biohazard pattern.  I went to bed that night thinking about it and the next morning, I woke with a fully formed idea for Biohazard.  From the matte black frame to the translucent green background with neon detail and the letters that used shades of grey to blur edges and trick the eye a little in to seeing curves.  Once I had that idea, I knew I could apply it to this series of projects.

Sometimes creating is a process, applying skills and techniques to produce something, experimenting to see what happens.  You can often see artists work developing as they explore a principle.  Inspiration is that eureka moment, the breakthrough when you realise something new.  It's a great feeling.

Unfortunately, this series of collaboration is not one where inspiration strikes often.  They are hard work, balancing colours and lightening and darkening individual beads in the letters to create the correct visual effect.  The background of Inspire was developed from a photograph I took from a ship of the churning water of the bow wave.  I zoomed in and changed individual colours.  I chose citrus colours for their bright energy and white for the blank page, because you have to keep creating, keeping showing up at the blank page in order to be inspired....

I was inspired when it came to the whites though....  I had an idea to play with opacity.  Beads have a wonderful quality which allows you to play with light.  I used opaque white beads and crystal beads and I needed something inbetween and chose white lined crystal.  I love the effect this gives.  Like glass painted white where the paint has been scrapped off to varying degrees.  It's an effect I am sure I will use again and when I do, it will be less about being inspired and more about using a skill, an understanding I already have.  I think inspiration is like leveling up in a game.

Inspiration hit working on my tartans too.  I didn't want to make tartans using diamonds and I didn't want to only have a tiny part of a large pattern, in the way you would if you work it in a perpendicular fashion or even at 45 degrees.  It hit me that you could work it at an angle so that you got a larger variety of the larger pattern and the shapes would be closer to rectangular, although not perfect.  Each tartan I make uses that initial inspiration but I don't have that big flash of inspiration for each one.

I like that the word inspire also means to inhale, the opposite of expire.  It's a bringing in of breathe.  Air symbolizes the mental body.  Bringing in ideas....  It isn't just about the mind though.  There is an emotion connected to being inspired, an energy.  It feels really good!

Where do these ideas come from?  It doesn't always feel like they come from us.  People believed that the bible was inspired by God.  The Greeks believed that the Muses inspired mortals and there were nine who inspire literature, science and the arts in all their variety.  The word muse has come to mean a person that inspires someone's art and painters were famous for having muses.  Generally male artists had female muses and they were inspired by the beauty of their muse to attempt to recreate the female form.  There is a dark side to this relationship though...

Sometimes the female muses were artists in their own right but their art was never going to be as important in a male dominated world.  Some artists were married to their muses and considered their needs.  Others would have passionate relationships with a muse for a time, before moving on to the next.  Picasso was infamous for his muses, he was married twice and had four children by three different women.  He often had mistresses.  His relationships were stormy but vital to his creative process, though the women often fared less well.  His second wife and one of his mistresses committed suicide and others had nervous breakdowns.  Marie Francoise Gilot was muse, mistress and artist and following her split with Picasso, he used his influence to discourage support of her artwork and her celebrity fame far eclipsed her artistic fame.

I find the world around me hugely inspiring.  The natural world, the work of others, science, popular culture....  There is inspiration to be found everywhere....