Do you still have that inspiration, that spark, that magical something or have you drifted away from that long ago moment and now just do what you think will please the jury, the judges the buyers?
What makes your hands itch to get that tool out and do the thing that long ago first fired your engine?
Well, what is it?
I was at the museum yesterday and again was enchanted by Ken Mean’s wonderful sculptures. But not only are his completed pieces fantastic, his working drawings, the partially completed carvings even the layout sketches are incredible.
(Yes I really did mean cartoon. It’s a working drawing often at full scale done on sturdy cartone paper used as a guide by the sculptor. Modello is also use, sometimes interchangeably, so don’t think Scooby-Doo, think Michelangelo.)
I barely have the skills to get the shading right on a pencil sketch so drawings of such exquisite detail and done to scale are a wonder to me. And if I were capable of doing such a thing I would probably quit there.
Good thing Ken Means isn’t such a slacker. But the point is a valid one; anything which inspires you to passion is a great driving impulse for your work.
Didja ever look at the cars in the slick magazines and just for a minute stop thinking about becoming James Bond, driving trough the Alps with a slinky blonde, wearing a smile and a gauze top barley managing to constrain the Alps, the wind blowing through her hair and the sound of the road echoing in your ears and look at the artistry of how that picture was compose? What about the craft that created the body itself?
No car becomes an icon because of looks alone, okay, the tractor manufacturer Lamborghini did manage the trick and of course Lexus is nothing but a re-bodied Camry with a great marketing program, but most of the time when a car becomes style icon it has a glorious history.
The legendary Ferrari marquee has produced so many that they’ve worked their way into MOMA. And why not? The incredible 250 GTO since it’s introduction in 1962 has become the silhouette of all sports cars and yet, no more than a handful realize that the Scaglietti body, design by Pininfarina is the image behind all of the copies.
The beautiful brute had a racing career unmatched by any of its rivals and even today fifty years after it commands the highest auction prices of any of the collectible Ferraris, inspiration for all of the generations and yet virtually unknown.
Something as simple as a wine glass on a shelf with the sun pouring through a kitchen window, okay Oregon, fog pouring through the kitchen window, can fire the eye and send the juices into overdrive.
The humble goldfish victim of so many Viking funerals in toilet bowls across the nation has sent many an artist to the easel.
There is something out there that will light your fire if only you let it.
We North Americans love sport and sportsmen and women, there’s an image everyone can understand and yet most modern artists have ignored it save for the late LeRoy Neiman.
I remember the black and white image of a beaten and battered Y.A. Tittle kneeling in defeat on the football field. I no longer remember what game it was nor do I care, that painful, savage image is burned into my memory.
So too is the image of a little sprit who single-handedly changed women’s gymnastics. Does anyone remember who the most revered; successful women’s gymnast was before Olga Korbut set the camera aflame? She was the Russian Ludmilla Tourischeva, so dominant is her sport that several required movements bear her name, but once Korbut arrived the legendary Tourischeva vanished. Feeling inspired?
I have thought for several years our own uber successful U.S. Women’s Soccer Team should license the Shania Twain song, “She’s Not Just a Pretty Face”. There are Cover Girls aplenty on the team, Alex Morgan, Hope Solo and super sub Sydney Leroux, but the guts of the team, the diggers, the grunts, the guys in the trenches who don’t get the press, who never get stalked by the paparazzi, they are the ones with the less than pretty faces who you’d better watch out for, Megan Rapinoe, Christy Rampone and Abby the Magnificent. Beauties, maybe but inspirational, without a doubt!
It doesn’t matter what inspires you, so long as you find inspiration somewhere.
