Looking back and looking in

This week Inspiration Avenue the Etsy Group and creative challenge blog (of which I am a member) is celebrating hitting 500 followers with a little party. We have giveaways and something creative for you to join in with. Our challenge this week is to share what gives you the inspiration to create.

Now, let me tell you a story... Over two years ago I came across these creative ladies when they held another blog party on a similar theme. I shared what stirs my soul to write and paint and before I knew it had found myself with a whole heap of new friends keen to support me on my artistic journey. With their encouragement I opened my own Etsy shop, became a member of their wonderful tribe and sold some art! Without these wonderfully kind and caring folk, I doubt I would have had the confidence to keep trying new techniques, pushing myself and listening to the Muse inside me who was begging to be let out to play.

So, my Inspiration is YOU! Thank you both team mates and the wonderfully talented artists and creatives who join in every week with our challenges - your work never ceases to amaze me! I hope you don't think it's a cop out, but rather than create something new for this week, I really wanted to share again what started it all over two years ago. If I have time later in the week, I may add a few more to this list, but really want to get to that party right now... I just can't wait!


5 degrees of inspiration (originally posted 1st August 2009)

I've been invited to a wonderful party - fancy dress of course! Come dressed in your five favourite inspirations... It's not too late to join in, grab your 'drive' and journey over...

Inspiration. The word seems to brush gently as it passes your lips,

gossamer soft and strangely enticing.

Primo - My Muse

She is surely a magical thing but playful too. My secret self who will creep up on me when least expected, and don’t think she follows any rules. No way! Inspiration makes an appearance only when she wants to. It’s her terms or no terms.

Inspiration is my muse; she is what turns a dull day into a fine one; a pile of old paper into a work of art and a tiny germ of an idea into a full-blown pandemic of explosive creativity! Sometimes I just have to sit at a keyboard or in front of some art materials and she will weave her spells. Occasionally she makes me work a bit harder for her services. However, the time she pays me most visits (the little minx) is late at night when I am trying to sleep. POP goes the bubble of idea she sends me scuttling into my brain and spreading out its interesting tendrils, exploring a myriad possibilities. Will I remember by morning? Possibly not, so my muse gives me a quick nudge, turns on the bedside lamp and presents me with my beautiful floral notebook into which I diligently record her delightful suggestions.

Secondo - Artists & Creatives

The creativity of others – whether it be a beautiful ACEO on Etsy or gazing in awe in front of the great Masters. Standing in front of the Canalettos in the National Gallery in London, I once had what can only be described as a moment of self-discovery. It is almost impossible to put into words. I felt uplifted and suddenly in touch with lost emotion, with the desire to create and dig for soul treasure.

Websites like Etsy had me dreaming and drooling until suddenly I stopped thinking "if only" and instead dived in head first into a box of art supplies. I came out sticky, paint-stained, crumpled, creased, frustrated, exhilarated but above all motivated. No matter the result, it's the journey that counts. It doesn't have to rank alongside Canaletto, Rosetti or Monet. It just has to please me.

My soul is like a sponge soaked in all this inspirational juice. Everywhere I turn I'm drenched in showers of it. Thank you to all you lovely creative people.
Terzo - Italy

What magic lifts from the fragrant hills? What secrets lie behind honeyed walls and terracotta tile? What secret elixir inhabits the vino rosso? Maybe it is the incurable romantic in me, but there is something timelessly enticing about the land of Romeo and his sweetheart. Artists and writers across the centuries have been drawn in mesmerised and, growing up in such surroundings how can you fail but to become Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Puccini or even Ferrari?

The first time I sat open-mouthed in front of the film adaptation of the E M Forster classic, A Room with a View, I was in love. I only have to catch a passing glimpse of rolling Tuscan countryside and I am reaching for paintbrush. Ah if only I could truly capture that essence.

Quarto - Feedback

Well, I admit that no one really likes criticism but if ever anything was guaranteed to goad me into action to improve anything I have created then a little niggling dig is sure to rile the Muse into action - providing of course that you see their point of view (there's always a caveat!). "I'll show them..."

But thankfully the scales of happiness do sometimes swing in our favour. How wonderful to receive praise... but is it really as good at kick-starting the Muse? Does it not put extra pressure to out-perform or at the very least equal?

And who can ever resist the pull of a little healthy competition too?

And now alas my inner critic is chastising me. How can I possibly post this without an appropriate picture? I don't have any artwork that quite epitomises the inspiring power of a few choice words. No, not excellent.


Quinto - Heston Blumenthal

Just watch and tell me you're not inspired! Anything is possible. Pure genius.

Heston is arguably one of the world's greatest chefs and undoubtedly the most imaginative.

He is a man who thrives on creativity, cut him in half (not recommended) and he'll have it written through him. It doesn't matter whether he creates culinary concoctions, advertisements, films or breeze blocks. It's about having the nerve to fire up that creativity with inspiration from the most unlikely sources; never being afraid to try something different and, possibly most important, keeping at it until you get the results you're after - it may not be exactly what you set out to do at the start, but it's giving people what they didn't know they wanted - and boy do they want it!

Thank you for the invite. I'm having fun so far, but a little lonely at the party on my own... Who will turn up next and what costumes will they be wearing?

Tuscan dreaming

Last time I dreamt I went to Tuscany again...

Well actually I didn't, but why let the truth get in the way of a great opening line?

I was doing a little online research this morning, gazing at image after image of sunflowers in anticipation of painting one for the IA challenge. But then I had the idea of combining the sunshine of both flower and scene for total immersion in my subject matter. I rather like it!

I'm still plotting my Tuscan holiday though...

Italian mustard

I was badly in need of splashing some paint about today. I've spent far too much time eating and watching TV in the last week and my Muse was getting into a right old sulk. She wasn't even to be placated when I bought some bargain canvases in the sales. I had to do something. I couldn't bear all the sighing.

Popping along to Mixed Media Monday's challenge seemed the cure. Paint something with a colour you don't like. Hmmm.... Well, that's a bit tricky but mustard immediately came to mind. Reminds me of the suits my English teacher used to wear back in the 1980s when they were never fashionable.

I took some sludgy looking paint and brayered it on. I started thinking ugly, decaying thoughts. I made a rather dreary background planning for a miserable picture and, for my Muse, this was the final straw. She leapt out of her apathy and vented at me in Italian for several minutes. I was surprised as I've always thought she was Greek.

As I don't speak Italian (or Greek for that matter) I hadn't a clue what she was screaming about, but it did at least prompt a chain of thought. It's coming up to New Year... I really want to go to Italy this year... Shall we list as a resolution? I think so, don't you?

My Muse wasn't finished with me though, not by a long chalk. Naturally she fancies a holiday under the Tuscan sun but she was also concerned with me finishing something today and getting back to blogging.

She muttered something about inspiration being di fronte al tuo viso and the penny dropped. A leftover from Christmas feasting - not a mince pie or Turkey leg - a napkin with an Italian scene - heavy on the mustard. I abandoned my decay and went for a bit of sunshine. I could just nibble on an olive now...

I'll leave you to guess which bits of the picture are collaged from my napkin... (my Muse has given up on me and retreated to bed with a cold compress).

Postcard from Tuscany

I closed my eyes and took flight on the wings of my dreams. The soft elixir of the birdsong, wine and intoxicating scents carried me high into the hills above Firenze. Delicate flavours tinged with grape and olive caressed my taste buds lulling me into a state of soporific indulgence. Music enveloped my senses like the softest duck down and the setting sun bronzed my skin until it glowed with pleasure and warmth.

I thought that having written about the inspiring affects of Italia, I should perhaps let the Muse free to run under the Cypresses for an hour while I got the collaging and painting materials out. A little teamwork (and a glass of wine) was just the thing we needed to soothe ourselves after a trying day.

Infine

In my second year at University I lived in a road with a name that conjured up dirty railway bridges and industrial revolutions. Viaduct Road was not the most glamorous street in sunny Brighton and indeed, at that time it was also known as the A27 - one of the main routes through the town before they built the shiny new by-pass. What it did have though, sitting quite regally at the bottom of the rows of terraced houses, was a fine old cinema.

The Duke of York's was, and still is, a great art-house cinema where you can find the uncommercial gems, old classics or subtitled beauties. It only had one screen, squidgy old seats that got seriously uncomfortable if you ever went to see a double-bill and a proper cafe that sold cakes and cups of tea - not a popped piece of corn in sight!

In 1989, one of the most talked about films, and winner of an Oscar for best foreign language film was Cinema Paradiso. This, naturally, was the kind of film that the Duke of York's was open for! The hopeless romantic in me called me down the road and one enchanted evening, housemate Rosie and I bought our tickets and settled ourselves in the red velvet plush.

Imagine our disappointment however when the film started... those subtitles surely weren't Italian, they looked trés français. Gerard Depardieu was not supposed to be in a small town cinema in Sicilly. Zut alors! We were in the wrong film. That's the trouble with only having one screen - it tends to suggest that you just request "two tickets" rather than adding a qualifying "for..." Well, the Cinema Paradiso run had ended the previous evening. Trop belle pour toi was a pleasant enough way to pass an evening I suppose but it wasn't Italy.

Fast forward life's projector 20 years (surely, some mistake here... was 1989 really TWENTY YEARS AGO??). Tonight I finally watched it. Beautiful, romantic, nostalgic, gentle... worth the wait.

PS: the music from the film is really beautiful - love theme by Ennio Morricone

A Tuscan Muse

I watched a beautiful film last called called Under the Tuscan Sun, about an American writer who buys a run-down Italian farmhouse on a crazy whim and moves to the land of swaying cypresses, corn fields dotted with ruby poppies and a cast of whimsical and colourful characters. I've always yearned to go to Tuscany - perhaps it was watching Room with a View for the first time and reading the book so often or maybe it's just a natural affinity with the place, I don't know what first started this dream... Anyway, in the spirit of the new Me, who openly states her, ambitions, I am saying it here for all to read. I WILL GO ON HOLIDAY TO TUSCANY. I WILL GAZE IN AWE AT THE MASTERS IN THE UFFIZI IN FLORENCE. I WILL STAY IN A FARMHOUSE OVERLOOKING IL DUOMO. I WILL WANDER OVER THE PONTE VECCHIO. I have to say I was somewhat inspired after watching the film. My muse made a welcome return and started bombarding me with some great story ideas. I also have to confess I did indulge in a little holiday dreaming googling B&Bs with romantic views... well, one has to have a focus for one's ambitions after all!
One of my internet ramblings led me to a page designed by a creative soul with a passion for both reading and Italy and London (not quite the same, but there is no reason why you can't love them both - I do!). This enthusiastic reader had listed books and films set in Florence, Venice and London. He also treated us to some photos of his cats which looked rather cute but not a patch on my two beauties. I just love the internet for sites like this,just being able to share your passions with others who may stumble across it. There was actually something on the page that gave me inspiration for a bit of my own literature but that, as they say, is another story!