I’ve been fascinated by the creative process ever since I was a young student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, casting about for subject matter and settling into my own creative voice.
One key piece to support healthy productive creativity is stimulating inputs. What kind of inputs stimulate the creative centers of the brain? What kind of inputs stimulate us visually? Emotionally? Spiritually? Mentally? Physically?
I’d really like to know, what’s one thing that inspires you?
I’d love to feature your inspiration in the mindful artist blog and newsletter. Write me an email at info@themindfulartist.com . Just a quick sentence or two to share with us one of your inspirations. Please include a photo or two– either of to illustrate your inspiration, to an image of your artwork. Also if you have a blog or website url you’d like to share, please include that, too!
Just to get the ball rolling, I’ll share one of my favorite things to look at.
Visual stimulation is so vital to my process. There are so many things that nourish me visually. One of them is looking at vintage textiles. You may know I am a bit of a vintage nut.
I love vintage clothing and appreciate the unique patterns, color palettes and textures of vintage fabrics particularly of the 30s – 60s.
If you know my work , you’ll know it looks nothing like these textiles. But they are like vitamins for my artistic self. The just give me a little hum that leaves me feeling full and happy. That feeling is something that fills my creative well.
As always, I love to hear your comments! Please share below or email me to have your creative inspiration added here in future blog posts.
Responses to “What inspires your creative process?”
donna gleckler
Hi, For me it is often nature. I walk daily and sometimes it can be the curve of a branch. Or its texture.
REpurposing can help too as it makes me see things in a different light with different definitions.
wondering if I can take a bunch of old laminate samples, paint them with shimmering metallic paints and assemble hang them as a wall hanging/mobile. who knows It is at the fantasy stage right now.
Carol Steinberg
Michele, thanks for asking. I’m inspired by flowers, sunlight, and bright colors–among other things. I’ll send you some photos.
Bart Brooks
Hi Michele,
Similarly, I am sometimes inspired by other art that gives me my own creative idea. Interestingly, The two are almost always entirely different.
Bart Brooks
Molly
Space inspires me…the absence of something or an overabundance of it drives me to make changes! Also feelings that need to be drawn out from the subconscious mind must manifest. What brings these emotions about? I’d say the interconnectedness of spirit within all…
“In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?”
-Igor Stravinsky
Bill Sotomayor
Michele,
You had asked me what inspires me to create. What inspires me is trusting in my own artistic abilities. By this I mean that I put a line on a sheet of sketch paper and start from there. Each time I add something new, a new direction appears for me to go. I don’t have anything specific in mind when I start, it just appears to me where it will take me. That is trusting in one’s own creative spirit.
Danila Rumold
Trekking through the mountains, amongst the shaded forests, alongside the babbling rivers and looking down into the crystal clear glacier lakes, I can experience moments of quiet and mental stillness. In this space, connected to Nature, my creativity flows speaking my unshakable truth.