What Inspires You? - themindfulartist.comthemindfulartist.com

In this feature, each month artists share one thing that excites them creatively.

One key piece to support healthy, productive creativity is stimulating inputs. What kinds of things 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 fills your creative cup? Share with us in the comment section below.

What Inspires You?
Juhli Caldwell

Being creative is not something I have to work at, it is a gift I feel I was born with fully developed. I believe everyone is a creator. Every experience in life for me turns out to have a creative component, from becoming invisible in a bad part of town to arranging flowers for the kitchen table. Artistic creativity, in my own perception, is one of allowing myself to be guided by a higher energy than my ego, of getting out of the way and letting go of forcing to a place of opening up to the creative process.

An example, this morning, as I was sorting through some imperfect computer photo prints, rippping up the ones that were seconds, thinking “this is a shame that I would waste this lovely color” Just because it did not come out right. ( ink had run out and so I replaced the ink and ran it through again, which caused a blurring)- Anyways, something quietly suggested that I might try cutting up the prints and see what comes out. One image had yielded a painting previously that I am still working on and now I could see 3 new images. I developed the images with some ink further, to bring them out and made a note as to what they meant. As I looked at these little images together, they formed a kind of chronology or story.

I mounted these images together in a line using contact cement on heavy white paper and wrote in pencil the meaning of each little image, then placed in a frame.

This I did before breakfast.