Artsz.org

We all love music, but some of us more than others, and some of us use music to inspire our lives and in the case of artists, this music inspires them to create their art.

Where do artists get their inspiration from? You might be surprised to learn that they are inspired everyday events, by other art, movies and music. Most artists are very emotional, sensitive people and everything in their environment influences the way they see things. Take the blog The Modern Artist. She expresses the deep emotional feelings she gets when listening to a U2 song.  Angel Turner Dyke is a professional modern artist, who takes images she finds in nature and adds her own feelings, person, and creativity to them. Her work stands out because, she takes what would otherwise be stark images, and creates color within them.  In a way this artist focuses on modern abstract art, and yet her work is not all abstract, but a combination of modern illustration, some abstract, and there are even some hints of impressionism (color) in her work.  You can tell from her work that this artist’s fills her world and her artwork with passion, love and color.

Romare Bearden Famous American Modern Artist Inspired by Music, Sounds in Nature

Artists are inspired by many different things. I want to talk a little bit about Romare Bearden, an unusual American artist. Bearden was an African American born in the first part of the 20th century.   He came from the Bronx and graduated from New York University with a degree in education. What makes Bearden so distinct is his interests in so many different things.

He was a professional baseball player in the Negro leagues, but in between his sports sessions he always found time to take courses in art and became a lead cartoonist for the Eucleian Society. He was also a writer, a costume designer for the theatre, a composer.

He became well known as an artist for a piece he did in 1970 where he combined polymer paint on composition board, with cloth and paper. The piece called Patchwork Quit stands today in the museum of Modern Art.

He studied art in Germany and took much of his influence from Mexican Muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco. When the war broke out, he joined and afterward went to France to study philosophy. He also took up composing and helped write “Sea Breeze.” This artist took his inspiration from many different interest and many different things, but primarily form music, and sounds. His art was universal, because he was well read, well educated and his friends were artists, poets, musicians, and writers.

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Modern art has taken on new meaning and artists all over the world are exploring new ways of expressing their ideas through art using mixed media. This is not to be confused with multi media art, as both are distinctive and different, although there are some visual artists that integrate parts of multimedia art with traditional art methods.

Most mixed media artists like experimenting with their art and the way they see things. They are frustrated with the requirements placed by society on traditional art methods. Their position is “why should an artist have to only stick with one media such as watercolor, oils, acrylics, paper?” Why can’t an artist mix different types of media, including the surface on which the painting is made?

Many of today’s great artist have become truly inventive, and this may be caused by the increasing use of technology, or just by highly inventive minds.

In the past, most artists did not mix medias probably because of the constraints of society of their times, or because of atmospheric conditions of the time which would caused a mixed media piece to deteriorate at a quicker rate, but today modern art materials easily allow for combinations of materials.

Many modern artists use their subjects and paintings to depict society’s relevant concepts. So let’s say the subject is a woman looking at herself in a mirror. The artist could envision the concept of self-image. This could be represented by a woman looking at herself at the mirror and seeing (reflected) a different person from what the observer sees. This would illustrate that we see ourselves different from what the rest see us. Whatever the ultimate framework, modern paintings serve to depict socially relevant concepts.

As a sharp contrast many traditional artists chose to rely on sublime expressions, feelings and emotions as their basis for inspiration. So if the subject is a woman smiling, the artist could also convey sadness in her eyes, restlessness by way her hands are placed on her lap etc.