Link to full podcast: https://soundcloud.com/heelhang/the-artists-circle-inspiration
“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.” - Chuck Close
Prompt:
What inspires you… either once, in an ongoing way or an unexpected way?
My Answer:
Deadlines and constraints, something new…
Thoughts and Actions:
My favorite places to get inspiration…
looking at old work
Connecting with other artists or looking at other artists work
Being in a new place
Critique
Learning or research
Take a class - so you can think like someone else
How to get out of a rut/block:
Schedule short focused work periods
Get input from others
Examine your process
The artworld is built on copying. It’s engrained. Unlike plagiarism in literature, In visual art, copying masterworks is something many artists have built into their studies for centuries. Why? Because it’s an excellent way to closely study and evaluate incredible work.
How to be inspired without copying other artists work:
Limit your toolkit
List out possible variations
Repeat the work until it feels like yours, add changes
Change the medium
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