Finding Inspiration

Every artist I read about says people always went to know where they get their inspirations. The short answer is 'anywhere and everywhere'. This morning I was watching a random TV show about remodeling a bedroom. A real estate agent was tired of the slow trend in housing sales and decided to go to Southwest Asia to get away from it all.  Once she got home she wanted to transform her boring bedroom into one with an Asian feel. In Asia she had met a street artist and commissioned him to paint her a series of four paintings to hang as a set on her wall.  She liked his work but she wanted something in purples. I took one look and thought I'd love to do a series of four square foot paintings in purple and gold.

We all grow up with color prejudices we get from well meaning parents and teachers and friends.  I remember once I went to work in my favorite red and purple skirt.  A friend took me aside and said, 'My mother would never let me out of the house in that." I said, "You mom doesn't let you wear long skirts."  She said, "No, we weren't allowed to wear red and purple together because they clash."  I was an adult at the time and had a good laugh over that.  Sometime in my childhood someone told me the same thing about gold (yellow) and purple.  So I've avoided that color combination because it clashes.  Yet here were these four paintings on this show that I fell in love with.  I couldn't wait to try something similar.

First I put gesso mixed with purple and gold all over four Bristol Vellum squares. I let those dry. I kept out the one I wanted to do for my daily painting and put the rest away.

I love dancing and dancers, so I wanted a dancer on at least one panel. So that's what I did today and I'm loving it.  And surprisingly I'm loving gold and purple together.  Now I'm thinking we all get stuck in artistic ruts of using the same colors we are most drawn to.  I'm thinking of making a bunch of color squares, tossing them in a hat and randomly drawing 2 or 3 for future paintings, to get away from my own color prejudices.