As a creative person I LOVE to look through art books and magazines displaying the types of mixed media collage artforms that I love to create myself – in fact until I discovered what are now some of my favourites I did not even know the term ‘mixed media’ existed to explain my desire to add dimension and texture to my art…it is so liberating to see other fabulous works.
As a marketing designer I also relied on books and websites for that little boost of inspiration, a spark from this one, a light bulb from that one…it is great to see an idea formulate with the ingredients of other inspiring work.
I always worried that seeking inspiration from other artists made me less of an original creator. That somehow in borrowing from those more talented than myself that my own work was a pastiche rather than an original.
I was so excited when I stumbled upon the most gorgeous “Water Dragon” artwork by Chris Chun Art on an Avant Card recently and followed the link to his studio.
It was so fabulous and filled with light and colour and patters and such talent.
It was a video that he posted on You Tube of his studio in Thailand that set my heart to fluttering – here is this amazing creative talented artist showing the creation of a gorgeous pattern called the “Tree of Life” that was used on a range of tea cups and saucers….what was that I saw on his work desk? A William Morris book…he talked about how he was inspired by other designs!
Ya-hooooo!!!
It is OK to be inspired by other talents and other designers…Chris said so! Honestly I had one of those moments when I realised that perhaps I was being too hard on myself and it was my negative self talk that was stopping me from creating as much art as I would like to by saying that I had nothing original to contribute. Silly me.
Thanks Chris for the inspiration, and for the gorgeous permission to be inspired.