Inspiration -

Where does it come from – and where does it go to?

I often hear or read of artists saying that they are, at the moment, lacking in inspiration. But ‘inspiration’ is a word that I’m very hesitant to use because I’m not sure how to use it correctly. In fact when, some years ago, a friend drafted an Artist’s Statement for me, I particularly asked him to avoid using the phrases ‘inspired by’ or ‘ gets her inspiration from’ because I felt that wouldn’t be an accurate description of what needed to be said.

One dictionary definition of ‘inspiration’ is: the act of drawing in, especially the act of inhalation of  air into the lungs and I think this literal, physical definition is a good one because it describes taking something from outside of us (the air) and pulling it inside us (into our lungs). And probably this is the way that ‘inspiration’ is  generally used – ‘she is inspired by the wonderful scenery’, or ‘he was inspired by the characters of the people he met’. Something from without sparking off a reaction within us.

My difficulty with using the word is that I’m pretty sure that for me it’s not quite as simple as that. It’s more of a two-way process, although I don’t entirely understand it.

I live in Abergavenny, a little old market town on the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park, nestling between three mountains, Sugarloaf, Skirrid and The Blorenge. Inspiring scenery indeed and I love it! And yet, I have hardly ever painted the  mountains. I’d be a lot richer if I had as I’m told that’s what the tourist want. It’s not that I don’t like the mountain scenery. It’s wonderful to be able to walk to the top of Sugarloaf or Skirrid for all sorts of reasons – the splendid views, the fresher air and the feeling of being ‘on top of the world’.

The photo above is of Sugarloaf, seen from the top of Skirrid, 

or The Holy Mountain, as it is known locally.

And yet, I rarely  feel ‘inspired’ to paint the mountains! 

This pastel painting of the Brecon Beacons, from a photo that I risked life and limb to take from the middle of the Brecon by-pass, is hardly the sort of the thing the tourists are looking for!

It's more of a 'design' really - it might look quite good on a tote bag or some kind of holiday souvenir but as a painting it doesn't fit the bill!

I can look out of my top windows at the majestic Blorenge Mountain and observe the changing colours, the play of the light (in this case on a dusting of snow) and feel a sense of wonder and yet...

 ....it’s The Meadows at the foot of the Blorenge that I keep painting! (Also not particularly popular with the tourists who have come to a little town that advertises itself as 'Markets, Mountains and More'!)

On another day I may turn round from the glorious view of the mountains from my windows and find that a corner of my bedroom is begging to be painted! There is nothing special about the corner of the room but somehow, it ‘speaks to me’, if that doesn’t sound too pretentious!

So I think there must be something inside me that responds to some ‘views’ and not to others, and that can vary from day to day, from month to month and even from year to year! One day the path to my garage seems to insist on being painted, on another day it is just the path to my garage, even though nothing has changed about the path or the garage, or even the light that falls on them. Both the external and the internal have to be in line with one another for a painting to occur. A kind of ‘receptive seeing’ has to be in place that I don’t think comes with trying to 'see'. It either comes or it doesn’t!

More than forty years ago, when I was teaching in a big school on a huge council estate, sometimes I would go out with my paints and sketch book in the lunch break and paint the back-alleys and the backs of sheds and garages in the drab built-up area around the school.

What was that all about! 

Inspiration, – ie the right external conditions – is, I think, only half the story; the other half depends on something else, something internal. I’m not sure if there is a word for it but it’s why I’m so reluctant to use the word 'inspiration'. Maybe the internal part is what we mean by the word Muse ( ‘guiding spirit’ is one dictionary definition).

When the Muse is in residence, who knows what outer ‘views’ will inspire us? But when the Muse has left us – and that can happen for all sorts of reasons – we are completely closed off, unreceptive, to the most ‘inspiring’ of our surroundings. It can be rather like looking at the world through the murky, mud-spattered window of a fast-moving train! And that can have implications for how we can recover our ‘inspiration’.

Pablo Picasso said: Inspiration exists but it has to find you working.

Does this point to the answer?

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Is it Art or is it Design?

 A Question of Labelling!

When I was attending Adult Education Classes at Wensum Lodge, Norwich, more than twenty years ago, one of our tutors made us the offer of evaluating our portfolios. I had a great deal of self-doubt at the time, although something deep inside me was quietly insistent that my work had some value and was worth pursuing. After carefully perusing my assorted offerings, including the rather wishy-washy winter landscapes in watercolours that I was so proud of, our tutor, pronounced me a ‘designer’ rather than a ‘fine artist’.

I was crestfallen because of course I’d hoped that he would say I was the next Russell Flint but it also started me wondering about the difference between Fine Art and Design. Were the gorgeous watercolour poppies on my curtains ‘Fine Art’ or were they ‘Design’?

Sometimes the line separating the two is hard to define and trying to arrive at an answer sent me into a state of paralysis with my work for quite some time. Fortunately I was prompted by a neighbour to stop worrying about it and ‘just do it’!

But this question has been floating around in the back of my mind again in recent months, since I joined GCU and Zazzle. Mostly we refer to ‘artists’ in those environments but why not ‘designers’? And then, just to complicate matters further, there are ‘illustrators’.... and dictionary definitions aren’t really much help.

I’m wondering whether what separates Fine Art from Design or Illustration might be to do with the intention behind the work? It begins to make some sense if the intention behind Fine Art is simply to communicate, while the intention behind Design is to decorate a surface of some kind, fabric, china, stationery, greeting cards or to address the visual aspects of something of everyday practical use such as a car or a window-frame.

Of course the line is still very blurred. I have ‘created’ mugs for my Zazzle store using images that were intended as Fine Art.and offered them as prints as well.
 

North Yorkshire Mug by helikettle
See other Mug Mugs

Piet Mondrian is just one of many fine artists, whose work hovers around the border between Fine Art and Design - in fact, Google images brings up Mondrian's images used to decorate clothing, shoes and even a car as well as the 'artworks' themselves! 

At what point does the original image change from being Fine Art to being Design? 

Why am I bothered about this? Well, the obvious reason is that the human brain is wired to seek patterns and sort things into categories. But could it also be that the sting of that tutor’s words all those years ago is still lurking somewhere, nagging me to resolve it once and for all by making sense of it?

Any ideas?

Art at School - Guest Post by Ulla Hennig

Ulla Hennig lives in Berlin, Germany, where she works at the University of the Arts; she is responsible for its website, as well as supporting and training others in computer use. She was initially trained as a teacher and her interest in computers, as far back as the '80s and '90s, led her to help older people with searching the internet and email. Ulla describes herself as a 'hobby photographer' and it was initially through my blog and her wonderful photographs in her online Zazzle store that Ulla and I became friends. Her knowledge of Photoshop, and how to get the best from it, is prodigious and now that she has started to draw again, she makes full use of it to enhance some of her drawings and 'create products' for her Zazzle Store. 

Ulla has kindly agreed to write about a subject that is dear to my heart - the shedding of her inhibitions that had prevented her from reaching her potential as an artist!

Art at School - Ulla Hennig

My three weeks vacation is over now. It was filled with creative activities. I now know that I love to draw, paint (yes, I actually began to color my drawings with watercolor pencils!) and to write. I have joined art communities like deviantart.com and totalartsoul.com.

I have discovered my inner artist, and I am having regular appointments with her.

I loved to draw when I was a child: animals, cartoons. My family encouraged me, but then...there were those art lessons at school! You had to follow a strict syllabus, and drawing was - as far as I remember - only a tiny part of it. You had to do this color circle and you had to fill it out without going over the edges. You had to paint the story of “Odysseus at the Giant’s cave”, and you had to do it using a certain set of colors (all kinds of dark colors and purple).

Art at school was no fun. There was no place for my creativity, and of course it was no place for encouragement. I remember once having created a painting which the teacher accepted. He did it with the words, “A blind hen sometimes finds a grain of corn” - no comment on that.

When I left school I had the impression that I had no creative abilities. During my studies at the university I had no time (or thought that investing time in drawing and painting would not be worth the time). Only now, in my 50s, I rediscovered those activities, due to the encouragement of some friends, some of them living in my hometown, Berlin, and one friend living in Wales.

I am glad to be on my way, but what about all those whose belief in their creativity has been killed in school by the way art is being taught there? And why does it have to be taught that way? What are your experiences?

You may be interested in visiting Ulla's blog and her Zazzle store. You can also find Ulla Hennig on facebook and Twitter.

Art, Business & Creativity

'It is better to create than to be learned; creating is the true essence of life.'

It wasn't this quotation from Barthold Georg Niebuhr, 18th Century German-Danish statesman and historian, that set me thinking about 'creativity' but, of all things, the commentators of the World Cup football matches repeated use of the word! For instance, 'X's goal, created by Y'. And 'he's a creative player'. Creativity and football? Surely not! Football's just a lot of men chasing a ball around the field, isn't it? This happened to come at a time when several people I know had brought up the question of the conflict between Art and Business. And it set me wondering, just wondering, mind you, just why and where that conflict arises and whether they really are in such diametrically opposed positions after all and whether the common factor, which, in a sense, binds them together, might be 'creativity'.


One dictionary definition of 'creativity' is simply, 'having the ability or power to create'. So if I can follow a recipe for Black Forest Gateau and it turns out well, am I being creative? I've certainly created something - a Black Forest Gateau. And if I succeed, against all the odds, in constructing a flat-pack shed, with instructions in pigeon-English, have I 'created' that shed? Of course the answer is 'yes - in a sense' but it's not what we usually think of as being 'creative'.


The Encyclopedia Brittanica's definition comes a lot closer to how we normally understand the term, creativity: 'the ability to make or otherwise bring into existence something new, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form.'


And this is where I think the link between Art and Business exists. This, much broader, definition, could encompass business ventures just as easily as artistic endeavours - and I'm not just referring to 'creative accounting', though you'd think that would be a contradiction in terms! Who would deny that some of our most successful entrepreneurs, such as Richard Branson, are creative? Again, in this sense, a scientist may be thought of as 'creative, even though, all too often, Science is contrasted with the Arts. Isn't Einstein a perfect example?

So far, so good and all of this may be pretty obvious. But what are the shared elements of 'creativity' in the Arts, the Sciences and 'Business' - and maybe even football? And what are the differences that underlie the difficulties some artists experience when it comes to dealing with the business side of things?


First, the common factors, as I see them. You may want to suggest others. I believe it was Betty Edwards, in 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' who proposed that the creative process always begins with a question that needs an answer, or a problem to be solved. (I lent my copy of her book years ago and never got it back, so I'm open to correction on this!) To me that implies the existence of a certain amount of imagination, the abilty to ask, 'What if...?' or 'I wonder what might happen if...' You could conceivably apply those questions to the assembly of the flat-pack shed and end up with a very nice bookcase and then you would have been truly creative - though I don't recommend trying it but it would no longer have been a 'painting by numbers' enterprise! So imagining, visualising, envisioning an end result are all part of the creative process, no matter whether it's a work of art or a business venture.


The ability to 'visualise' has become a core requirement of those 'manifesting' gurus who claim that we can achieve or own whatsoever we want.


But then there's another related factor that goes beyond envisaging and that may sometimes be at odds with it. Curiosity, the spirit of discovery, the willingness to explore unfamiliar territory, to entertain new and untested ideas, the flexibility to try something new when something isn't working - which all adds up to finding the courage to take risks. Does this all sound familiar when we are talking about our art? I'm sure that for many of us it does. But aren't these precisely the qualities that make a successful business person, an outstanding scientist - and even a world-class footballer?


Now let's look at some of the differences - I may well not have thought of all of them and I'd welcome the thoughts of others; after all these are just my rambling thoughts whilst cleaning the house!


Perhaps the most obvious difference is that it's a pretty well established fact that different parts of our brains are activated for different activities. Art flows most often from 'right-brain' activity, keeping the accounts, analysing sales statistics and so on are the function of the 'left-brain'.

(Please excuse my naughty pencil - it sometimes gets a bit carried away while I'm watching television!)

So whether an artist is comfortable with doing those 'left-brain' activities that a business requires, may depend on how well they can switch from one side to the other. Some people find it harder than others but the brain is, to some extent, plastic and even though we may not enjoy those 'left-brain' activities, I suspect that we are all capable of switching and that practice will make it easier as new neural pathways are formed.


A bigger and less easily overcome obstacle to business success in many artists is that of assuming the role of salesperson. A recent BBC television programme about 'Personality', presented by Dr Robert Winston, demonstrated very convincingly that most people who work successfully in 'Sales' are extroverts. I'm guessing here, but my hunch is that a lot of artists, of whatever kind, are introverts. (You can check it out here) So selling their work is likely to be anything from quite difficult to an absolute ordeal, depending on their degree of Introversion. Unfortunately I don't think there's anything much to be done about that to make it easier.


And then there's the question that I'm sure that most artists have come up against at some time - I certainly have! Given that we need to sell our work to pay the bills, there will always be the temptation to paint what we know will sell rather than staying true to our own 'vision'. Sometimes we can do it but I think that when we do, there's always a sense that we're in danger of losing our 'creativity'. We're back to painting by numbers. If we can do both - create for our own satisfaction as well as creating for the sake of selling - it may work. I know of that a local artist who churns out pretty watercolours of local scenes to sell in a Coffee Shop to pay the bills, while producing a completely different set of work for galleries in London, where the competition is much greater and the certainty of selling much smaller. My beef with him is that he sells his local paintings as originals at a knock-down price, copying the same scene over and over, which makes it very difficult for other local artists to get a decent price for their work! But, that apart, if he can do it without feeling that he's losing his integrity, good luck to him!


But I think there can sometimes be a 'creative solution' to even this problem..... for instance, last weekend I made some collage greeting card 'cupcakes' -

     

Two of them were sold almost the moment they were in the Zazzle marketplace, which is a record for me!

So I was faced with a choice - do I make more cupcakes, even though I know that it would rapidlyy cease tbeing a 'creative activity for me and turn into a production-line, 'collage by numbers' exercise - or not?

I opted for 'not' - but I did use a certain amount of 'creative thinking' to make two of the designs into slightly different greeting cards -

     

- and a few things on Zazzle, but only where I thought the design was particularly suitable.

'Cupcake' apron by helikettle
create an apron online using zazzle.co.uk

Chocolate Strawberry Cupcake Ringer Mug by helikettle
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Cupcake Spaghetti Strap Top by helikettle
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It remains to be seen whether that was a good 'business' decision but at least I know it was the best one for me, from the 'art' point of view!