Finding Inspiration Above the Clouds

We are flying high above South Africa, on our first international trip since Covid began. My mom and I are on our way to America to visit family. We look out the window, not long after ascending from Cape Town International Airport, and I am seized by inspiration, seeing the striking purple shadows on the mountain range just outside of Cape Town.

The shadows are so intense, the mountains so majestic and vast, the landscape so grand… I feel completely inspired. All I want to do is paint what I see, travel to what I’m looking down upon, explore and capture and create…

And then I think, what is this feeling? What is this (almost) compulsion, to want to capture what I’m so immediately and powerfully inspired by?

When I lived in Florence while studying at the Florence Academy of Art (which strangely feels like a very long time ago, but was just 2 years!), I used to host Salons in my beautiful, spacious apartment. I felt so uniquely suited to host these Salons – my apartment had a large open lounge with day beds, a double sofa and plenty of chairs. I loved inviting my fellow classmates to my home on the weekends to talk art. I intentionally wanted to create my own version of Gertrude Stein’s salons on Rue de Fleur in Paris that she hosted over 100 years ago.

Sitting in a circle in my lounge, exploring Inspiration from all it’s angles…

The theme of one of our Salons was Inspiration. It was the first Salon after our summer break. My parents were visiting me, so they were also in attendance, along with about 20 of my classmates, teachers and friends from outside the school. Leading up to the Salon, I was fretting – I didn’t have a theme! The usual rhythm we’d created over the year or so the Salons had been in existence, was for my friend Alice and I to come up with a theme early in the week, send it out to the Salon What’s App group with some thought-provoking questions, and then host the Salon on the Saturday evening.

This week for some reason it was up to me to come up with the theme, and I was stumped. I was saying I had no inspiration for the theme. Then a friend Stefan said, why not make that the theme! Inspiration! And I knew it was just right.

During that Salon we talked about what inspires us, and what inspiration is, and the purpose it serves. Looking back on my mind maps from that Salon (I always made mind maps to capture the inspirational (!) things people were saying and sharing), one comment stands out –

“Inspiration is the product of harnessing a feeling”

Two of our mind maps from the Inspiration Salon in my apartment in Florence, October 2018.

I feel something deep inside when I look at a stunning (to me) landscape, and I then feel inspired to respond in some way… by creating. By attempting to capture the beauty that moved me so…

We explored why one thing, or one scene, or one artwork, inspires us, but not another. When I walk around a gallery, some paintings will just reach out to me, grabbing me, calling me… but not others. Why? And for sure it is different for everyone! Is it based on our upbringing, our life experiences, our tastes, our passions and interests, our personality, our psychology…? Yes yes all of these, and more…

Which is what makes inspiration so fascinating to me. It is so personal! And yet, universal.

An early morning painting I did of the rocks and sea at Kommetjie, Cape Town, South Africa. 2021.

When I create a painting, I am hoping it will speak to someone else, to move them the way I was moved. And that can only happen if we have some things we share. Although at the same time, the hope is that my art can connect in ways that supersede the more tangible, definable aspects of what makes us who we are to the world. Finding those commonalities that run deeper, where our essence as human beings overrides the labels and experiences we define ourselves by.

Inspiration is also connected to motivation… I can say 100% it is my inspiration that motivates me to paint. When I walk onto a beach, the scene before me may or may not move me. When it does, I am immediately singularly focused, working like mad to get the scene down in paint before it changes too much and the moment that grabbed me becomes so far gone I can’t remember how to represent it anymore.

But then there’s the flipside… What if I’m not surrounded by something I find inspiring? Does that mean I don’t go outside? Resistance was something we talked about at the Salon, and my friend, teacher and the great artist Ben Fenske spoke at length about Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art. The powerful message from Steven Pressfield is to show up each and every day, and open yourself up to the inspiration, but know that it may not come, and don’t expect it to come. But be open. Be a receptacle. And it will come… eventually. Our job is to make ourselves available… By doing the hard work of showing up every day and facing our resistance head on.

The War of Art - Steven Pressfield

I listened to the audio book immediately after the Salon, and I also listed to a couple of Steven Pressfield’s interviews on radio online. It has now been almost 3 years since that Salon, and I think in general I have been living his advice. I set out in the morning not knowing what I will find… not knowing if I’ll be inspired… but committing to the process. The process of being open, of seeking, of exploring my beautiful natural environment, and most of the time, I find my inspiration.

Not mine… the inspiration. Inspiration, that mythical, magical thing that makes us uniquely human, and that brings – I believe – the power of art.

I am so grateful when inspiration strikes, and I am so grateful it drives me, motivates me and challenges me to keep on challenging myself, so that I can capture the beauty that inspires me to the best of my ability, to hope to do this natural environment of ours a little bit of justice for the awe-inspiring beauty that she is.

As I finish this blog post, I’m seeing the sky darken as the sun goes behind the clouds as I nears the horizon. There are low-lying fluffy clouds casting shadows onto the ocean way below. Tones of muted greys and silver blues. Like a Rothko painting… and I’m inspired all over again…