HELLO, FOLKS! EACH MONTH ON PATH WITH ART’S COMMUNITY BLOG,
we have a topic of discussion in which people can provide answers. This is one of many ways in which we can connect as an organization and share thoughts. You may request to directly submit your responses to the blog by using a WordPress account. If you feel that you are not technologically proficient enough to go with this option, you may submit your responses via e-mail to blog@pathwithart.org. And the editors will post on your behalf (still giving you credit for contribution, of course). Keep in mind that submissions containing inflammatory and divisive content will not be accepted.

The topic for the month of March 2021 is the following, an old chestnut to ask creative sorts, I suppose: What inspires you?

To kick things off, I guess what inspires me isn’t exactly an orthodox response: often, the ideas I get for my artwork are from me turning phrases, expressions, unusual remarks, and snippets of lyrics on their heads and creating depictions from that. That is, often times, I like to think of how these bits of words might look literally and create something from that. The words themselves act as the titles of these pieces. Oddly, this process seems to be a reverse of how I write as I don’t create titles to my written works until the body of the work has been completed.

Granted, not all of my visual art stems from this source and process of inspiration. When I find that I am working on an assigned project or something with a loose prompt, I regularly find myself returning to certain subjects that have been constants through out my life and finding ways of weaving those into the works, either overtly or subliminally. It’s fun seeing if and when people pick up on this.

So, how about you? What do you find inspiring? How does it affect you creatively?