Artsz.org

Winston Churchill once said, ¨A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.¨

A nation that could not be more proud of one of their very prominent artists is Canada and the pride they show in Kenojuak Ashevak.

While looking for women artists and trying to find what inspires them and how they inspire others I came across the work of Kenojuak Ashevak. This is a woman painter who had several disadvantages. The first being a woman painter of the early 20th century but more importantly was the fact she is of the Inuit tribe in Cape Dorset.

She overcame tuberculosis and poverty and is now one of the most prominent Canadian painters of her time. She was on of the first Inuit women to begin drawing in the 50´s and has since worked in painting, prints, and sculpture.  Her work can be seen on Canadian stamps and coins today.

Her prints, and art work are immersed with a mysticism that can only come from deep religious beliefs and cultural traditions within her tribe. Her paintings are timeless, rich with energy, tradition and color.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… Rank: wait… Age: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

“Life is full of dead spots. Art gives it life”

This quote was said by Irwin Edman, a 20th century philosopher. He mentioned that artists have a way of making life come alive and have been able to do so through time. Art history is full of icons of every type and nature. They can come in the form of images of Christ or the Virgin Mary or even an icon like “Campbells Tomato Soup Cans” by Andy Warhol. Icons let us connect with culture, nature, our own humanity, our inner self, and our religion.

When an artist gives meaning to a symbol or an image (an icon) then it acquires a certain value to society and to history and mankind.  To an artist the icons he takes on represent a part of himself or of the world he lives in, just as Jesus was a part of the world El Greco lived in and “Campbells Soup” was an icon of the world of Andy Warhol. What makes an icon up to a society depends on the societies beliefs, their tradition, and what they find value in, and these will differ depending on age group and on country.

Marc Shagall was a Russian born French painter (1887-1985), who painted with vivid colors and was influenced by Cubism, Surrealism and Fauvism. He once said:

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers and never succeeding.

What the artist is referring to in this quote is the beauty of Nature and how Nature is often a great source of inspiration for artists.  And when you really look at nature and think about it, it really is inspirational. Maybe artists are able to see and express their wonder at nature better than most of the rest of us.

Take a moment, and really look at a tree, a flower or the simplest plant in the world. Don’t think of it’s name, just look at this object in nature as if you had never seen it before. Isn’t it the most amazing thing you have ever seen, and not even the best artist in the world can recreate its magnificence, and yet a very good artist who acquires his inspiration from nature or from just about everything and anything can recreate the feelings we get when we truly look at objects in nature and let ourselves  just FEEL.

John Opie was once known to have said,

“Art is more godlike than science. Science discovers but art creates.”

This quote tries to answer the question that most artists are asked. What is it that gives them their inspiration? Sometimes we can easily see what the inspiration is. Sometimes the answer is as simple as the people and situations that surround the artist become his inspiration. But other times we don’t really know how the artist got his idea. Did Jesus and his disciples just appear to Da Vinci? Of course, not! So how did he come up with the idea?

Most artists use people, surroundings, and areas they are familiar with, even for works that are abstract or fantasy art. Sometimes the people in an art work are even a composite of many different people. Some artists are inspired by their dreams and even their life goals, that’s why I say that each piece is a part of the soul of the artist. So to really understand what inspires the artist, you need to know about the artist, his history and what interests him as a person.

It is really difficult to understand what inspires creativity, and that may be what makes it so interesting. Artists use many things to inspire the, a conversation, another piece of art, nature, and many different things.

PR: wait… I: wait… LD: wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Born in 1944, author Rita Mae Brown writes the Mrs. Murphy books and The “Sister” Jane Foxhunting mysteries. She is also known for rescuing myriads of animals and placing them in new homes. If she can not find other homes for them, she keeps them herself on her large Virginia homestead. Her Mrs. Murphy books are based on the sleuthing abilities of two cats and one dog.

Speaking from a writer’s viewpoint, she said,

“A deadline is negative inspiration. Still it’s better than no inspiration at all.”

College students everywhere can attest to getting the term paper or the project started and completed as a result of the deadline the professor set at the beginning of the semester.

However, even though the deadlines are negative inspirations, they can provide us with some fabulous projects and very creative papers. The artist who will be showing his or her work on a certain date may decide to expand on a certain landscape, turning one idea into several terrific ideas - all because of a deadline. The soloist who sings in church on a given Sunday has a deadline. The teacher who begins his or her career has a deadline for preparation before the work begins.

Deadlines are everywhere - in the workplace, in the social setting, in the school setting.

However negative the inspiration, let them inspire!

Ptoto: Courtesy of BradChristensen

Mathemetician and Scientist, George Louis Leclerc de Buffon, was not afraid to explore and discover and argue all that he studied. He lived during the 1700’s, an age when no one questioned the idea of the earth being older than 6,000 years; yet de Buffon declared that it was over 75,000 years old.

He also had ideas about the human mind and creativity. He said,

“The human mind cannot create anything. It produces nothing until after having been fertilized by experience and meditation; its acquisitions are the germs of its production.”

Our ideas come from thoughts that must come from somewhere. But they do not come full grown. They begin as seedlings and develop until they burst forth with fruit or flowers. The more we know and begin to understand, the more we feed the ideas within us. That nurturing process begins to produce creativity until suddenly, a full-blown idea seems to come from nowhere and it surprises us with its shape, imagination, and even wit.

Each person carries these seedlings within. Nourish your mind and nourish the minds of others around you. Creativity is life-giving and self-perpetuating and you can have a part in it.

Ptoto: Courtesy of Tinsell

Oliver Wendell Holmes was a physician, writer and poet in the 19th century. Dr. Holmes wrote Old Ironsides, a poem which caused the USS Constitution warship to be saved from the scrap heap and turned into a monument. He wrote medical articles and published essays and hymns, as well.

Dr. Holmes once wrote,

“A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.”

The kind of moments of which he speaks are very real but also very rare. Rare not because they do not come very often but rare because we do not slow down in our hurried lives enough to listen to and hear them.

Sometimes the moment’s insight will come through a story being told by a friend; sometimes it comes in the stillness of night; sometimes it comes because the day dawned bright and sunny after what seemed an eternity of dim and dreary days.

The often repeated phrase, “Out of the mouths of babes,” can bring many moments of insights if we are listening to the words of those children and infants. If we want to hear or see or feel the insights, we must take the time to hear, see, or feel. Those insights can help us avoid a lifetime of sorrow or they can provide a lifetime worth of peace in just a few minutes. It is all in how we perceive them.

American artist and writer, Scott Raymond Adams, was born in June of 1957. Although his most famous creation, the Dilbert comic strip, can be seen daily in the local paper, he also stays busy as the author of various books of satire, business commentaries, and philosophy, usually seen through the eyes of the ever vigilant Dilbert.

In his book, The Dilbert Principle, Scott Adams makes a rather profound statement.

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

Where does the artist start? How long does it take to get from idea to canvas or instrument or poem? How many mistakes are made before the poet gets it ‘just right’?

There are two phrases that struggle with each other in daily life. We tell the child to color inside the lines and yet we tell the adult to think outside the box. We can not have it both ways. How many mistakes were called to M C Escher’s attention before they stopped calling them mistakes and started calling them art? The child who colors in the lines, or outside of them, and the adult who thinks outside the box, or maybe inside of it, are both expressing creativity. The mistakes that are made sometimes lead to amazing results becoming a rare work of art, a beautiful motif in a piece of music, or a refrain in a moving poem. Be creative; color outside the lines; think outside the box; look for the art that moves full blown into consciousness as a result of the mistake gone right.

A saying I once read … that made me ponder as to what humanity is… was written by Margaret Laurence. She said:

“Know that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small, you are also unique and irreplaceable, as are all your fellow humans everywhere in the world.”

I believe that no one understands that saying better than an artist, that may be why so many artists are drawn to portrait, and figure work.

Most artists are fascinated by people, their expressions, their life, their lifestyle, and even the way people play, work and yes… even sleep. Its as if the artist himself, stands outside of the ongoings of humanity and looks in, as if he were looking at humanity through a looking glass or a window, what he sees can be fascinating, and alluring, drawing our attention away from ourselves and into what he sees. An artist can see sorrow, joy, hope and despair, where others note nothing amiss, and nothing different from any other person. As in the work of Casey Toussaint who gets her inspiration from train rides, people walking down the street or just by sitting in a quiet spot and pondering and looking at people and their expressions

It is an artist’s hand, that when taken to paper, can transpose these images, and let the rest of humanity see what he or she sees. An artist can find inspiration in other people’s faces and expressions, even while sleeping, dreaming or off in wandering thoughts. It is an artist’s ability to transcribe these feelings and show us the value of our own humanity, our own frailty, and our own emotions.

Never was a quote so true as that expressed by Emil Carlsen, who said

“Beauty is ever present like the light of the sun- even in the most humble object, only it takes an artist’s vision to detect it and a artists skill to reproduce it.”

An artist can see beauty in things that you and I would never even imagine. If fact, an object that we may even consider ugly, dilapidated, worn down and an utter sore on the eyes, an artists will see it in another light, and use his creativity to make that ugly thing into something very attractive.

Some artists choose to paint things that we throw away like cans, bottles, old worn clothes and shoes, or even as in the case of Joan DaGradi “old houses”. This painter adds inspiration, quaintness, and beauty to old dilapidated houses that are boarded up and ready to be torn down. But when you look at her paintings, you don’t see an old dilapidated house that is ready to be destroyed, you see an old house full of charm, one where a family was living, and one that is a part of the history of the artists’ community.