Hope this isn't cheesy, but I took the title of this series from my friend Becky slash myself. She graciously allowed me to paint in her sunroom and we jokingly came up with a series title, "Things Inspired by Things". So here I am, turning that into "Art Inspired by Art". As an artist - and I'm sure other artists would say the same thing - inspiration can come from almost anywhere. Especially from other forms of Art. I'm moved by a variety of art forms: visual art, dance, and more. All the things. All the Art.
Rarely can I find it so easily to find the correlation between inspiration and the work I create, but this one struck me as very direct. It happened when I re-watched the movie Arrival. Have you seen it? If you're at all the kind of person who likes emotional movies with stunning visuals... then you have to watch it. Watch it with full attention and allow yourself to feel the feels. Did I cry? Duh.
I'm not going to delve into the narrative of the movie other than saying that it is worth a first watch AND a second watch. It's about language and free will and memory and love and sacrifice. In the first watch, you are just trying to figure out what the heck is going on and in the second watch (like I experienced recently), you'll be able to see the layers beneath and immerse yourself in the true feeling. The soundtrack was especially stunning to me upon the second watch.
You can see the obvious correlation to my work in black ink by the visual stills alone. This reinforces the idea that art is a form of communication; something that bridges gaps and connects us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. We may not understand the literal meaning as spelled out by words from start to finish, but with context and experience, we are able to comprehend the entire picture as a whole.
The less obvious correlation, and this may just depend on your personal experience, is how a mark can map out the movement and shape of memories and emotion. It's like that moment when you see dappled morning light in your kitchen... I'm always asking myself how to capture that moment, that fleeting feeling. That human experience. When I work on a piece, my goal is to teeter between balanced and off-kilter through the movement created by either a mass of marks or a singular intense mark.
I can't say one came before the other... or that I consciously made these pieces with Arrival in mind. What happens sometimes is that something will move me and then it'll sink into my subconscious. Is it moving me and I'm absorbing it as a result or is it moving me because it is speaking to something that already exists within? Hard to say. It becomes a cycle of non-linear inspiration - between me and the world around me.
