Essays on Art

THE PROCESS OF ART: “INSPIRATION”.

SOME THOUGHTS

What is the source of artistic inspiration? What motivates the artist to do what he or she does?

My short answer is “everything”.

Woody Allen has said, “Eighty percent of success (in life) is just showing up.”

More and more I believe that, except I think the percentage is higher…

For me inspiration comes from “showing up” and paying attention to the everyday experiences of life -- of being open to the accumulated body of human experience, knowledge, science, and art.

Lately I’ve been viewing this infinite stream of creative input through three lenses: Form, Color, and Narrative,

Form -- The enduring simplicity and beauty of the Platonic forms, the rectangle, cube, triangle and circle is endlessly inspiring. Cezanne maintained that everything could be constructed from these building blocks. I agree.

Color -- Sometimes the experience you want to create for the viewer is all about the impact even a single color can have in its’ infinite variations and hues -- as profoundly demonstrated by Mark Rothko. That alone is enough.

Narrative -- I think the best art has an idea, a story, or a unifying concept underlying the physical representation that gives added value and increased depth of experience.

For example, my “Prisoner Series” was inspired by the TV show of the same name, my “Origin Series” from a Scientific American article on meteorites from Mars, and my latest “Earth Art Series” from the great land artists of the 1970s and from the pre-Columbian people of Peru’s Nazca Desert, who use the earth itself as their creative medium and pallet.

The ultimate motivation for me however, and what keeps me up nights thinking about the next creation, is the excitement of transforming imagination into reality. The joy of creating something that has never existed; of taking an idea from mind to pedestal, is profound, and addictive.

I hope you experience that same joy from viewing all the “Earth Art Series”, including “Crater” and “Nazca Spirits”.