Sources of Inspiration

You can always tell when an artist or musician has been 'in the game' a bit too long, and too focussed on career. Their work is about... their work. They do art-about-art that becomes increasingly self-referential. Pop stars writing about how hard it is to write a hit song. Novels write about novelists struggling to finish a novel. Occasionally it works, and is an interesting insight into an art form that you love, but sometimes its just a tiny bit self-indulgent. You want to shout "get a life!"

I used to be inspired by literature, mostly - an enigmatic line of poetry, especially Cavafis or Dimitris Tsaloumas or George Seferis, or sometimes a whole book (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, '100 Years of Solitude'). This is a bit of a problem now, as I'm not sure if some of the pieces in my old sketchbook are my own versions (I would cut up and re-arrange words, a la Fridge Poetry) or original, and when I have used an actual poem in the work - I love to use text - copyright means that I can't display it. Symbolism - whether literary or visual - has always fascinated me, and I've used it from time to time to explore some of the big themes like God and The Meaning of Life and Death. (After having spent the obligatory art-school period of self-obsessed angst).

Lately though, I've found inspiration in the oddest places. A TV craft show - machine stitching gives such an interesting line. The edges between fabrics in the stash by the sewing machine. (I can feel that obsession with line coming back. I've been writing too many tonal drawing tutorials, I guess!) And in small things - a pile of shredded paper, the tangle of a dead potplant; the ordered disorder of unraveling knitwear, and the random crazing on an old plate. I'm not sure how these mundane and fascinating lines are going to become a drawing of any significance, however!

drawing ideas
Renewing Creative Energy
Sketchbook Ideas