Inspiration

 

Which is easier for you? Maintaining focus or maintaining inspiration?

I find that plugging away on a project or idea is relatively easy, but maintaining inspiration is difficult. Often it is only when looking back that I realise my work has become visually mundane or banal, not shoddy as I am too much of a technical perfectionist for that, but, well, boring.

As I work with recycled textiles and fabric scraps, what I design and make is always dictated by what I have to hand. I allow myself to buy threads, quilt batting, calico, new scissors, but not much printed fabric or trimmings. Friends and family collect textiles for me which would otherwise end up in landfill.

That should maintain a constant cycle of inspiration and creativity, should it not? Sometimes it does, often it does. Work frequently changes as it progresses and an item which began in one form ends up as something visually different but pleasing. Sometimes it is frustrating when I run out of a particular texture, colour, or weight of fabric, mid-project and need to change tack.

Maintaining inspiration is difficult.

Earlier this week an artist whom I follow, Lorraine Fletcher, posted her delight at one of her pieces being featured in Vogue, and later Botanical Colours spoke of sustainability and Nature, relative to an article in Vogue. So, this morning along with the Sunday papers I bought a copy of Vogue as a treat.

If you know anything about me, at this point you will be falling off your chair in hysterics. Fashion, money, clothes, general fabulousness and I do NOT go together, Vogue is NOT my trademark.

I sat down with my mug of tea and began reading, no, I began looking:

Vogue is a visual feast!

Forget the price tags and lifestyles, forget even the products; look at the composition, styling, artistic license of the photography, colours, detail, clarity, special effects, faces, shadows, light, lighting, angles, backgrounds.

None of those were the reason for buying Vogue and I have yet to read those articles, but I feel a renewed mental vigour, an internal voice telling me that I can do better with my textiles, design, photography. What about this shade, or that colour combination, the line of this, the styling there?

What if I… why don’t I… I could… let me try…

That, my friend, is Inspiration.