I got all the way to my mid-teens before it suddenly came home to me one day that other people didn’t just suddenly get complete downloads of ideas the way I did.
Inspiration
People asked me, “Where do you get your ideas?” They thought I was lying when I told them. It was then that I was shocked to discover that some people didn’t get any.
Back then, I’d get complete start-to-finish packages. If it was a sculpture, I’d see the stone, uncarved – what kind of stone, what color, what tools to use, the texture – and I’d see all the stages of creation, one at a time, until it got to its final completion.
These visions came fast – lightning visions, I called them. Seared into my inner eyes.
I’d see a young woman holding a child as she crossed the street at an intersection, and just like that *poof* – I’d have a batik painting in bright reds and tropical color burned into my brain.
Or I’d hear a few words on the radio, and I’d ‘see’ a whole scene for a drawing in pencil. Or there would be a person doing something funny, or a child sleeping in a fuzzy-warm thing, holding a puppy in her arms.
They were that specific.
Once you get visions like that, you don’t forget them. And they bug you incessantly, until you finally allow them form in the real world.
But that changed. I don’t remember when. It became flashes, teases, parts of completed pieces – drawings, paintings, carvings – it didn’t matter the medium.
Later, as if the Universe was prodding me, making me fill in the blanks, I’d get even less – the visions were little corners of ideas – like a red shoe, or the tip of a flower.
I’d have to find out who wore that shoe, and what did it mean? Should I draw the entire person? Or just his foot?
Ah! I bet you didn’t know it was aristocratic men who made red shoes popular! And high heels! Google it – you’ll see! I wouldn’t have known any of that if I hadn’t had that flash of a shoe.
I draw flowers all the time, so flashes of petals or buds or specific types of leaves is quite the norm. Especially since I started my latest series about the healing properties of plants.
So I was dumbfounded, back then, when my classmate asked me where my ideas of what to make as art came from. I just figured everybody got ideas the same way I did.
Several of my classmates, and even one of my teachers, got quite upset at me, exclaiming I must be lying, because -they- didn’t get ideas like that! So I must be copying someone else!
I was flummoxed to hear that, and deeply hurt. But then I asked them who they thought I copied. They couldn’t come up with any names. The teacher was red in the face upon not finding anything the likes of what I did.
That was the dawning of my understanding that the art I make is original, unique, authentically mine.
Remembering all that, I have to laugh, because upon looking back at the art I did way back then, it wasn’t all that good. It was clumsy at best. But it definitely didn’t look like anyone else’s.
So where do you get your ideas?
Do you see things in nature you just have to paint or write about?
Do scenes of city-scapes inspire paintings or poems?
Do phrases you read, or parts of songs you hear, bring up ideas?
Do sudden flashes of emotion climb up and down your spine like prickly ice water?
That’s how it is for me, anyway. Tell me where you get your own ideas!
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INSPIRATION
© Angela Treat Lyon 2024