Gosh, arent we getting to lofty topics lately? Here i sit. Guess where. Anyone? ok. Starbucks. I know.... the tragedy that i would choose to spend time where im employed is fully evident.... But ya know... It's warm here and. And dry. And today being the kind of cold and rainy that leaves an impression on your soul, is more than enough reason to stop in here. That or either stay at home in bed watching Dane Cook.
Amazingly enough, what other people think about inspiration isn't all that interesting to me. What matters is that feeling... an energetic desire to reproduce an emotion. A place. The over-powering quietness that i get whenever inspiration strikes. And the absolute and total conviction, that behind this quiet tug,... lies the seeds of great art. Art that isn't necessarily great because of its flawless technique, or its realism. But art thats great, because it's an attempt to communicate things that have been impressed upon me by exterior influence. Chance even.
Some people find inspiration in the works of old European masters. They wish to convey tutelage by ancient artists who's subject matter and technique reflect a type of perfection that seems precocious for an era. Some seek to reproduce nature... finding the visual balance around them and its reproduction therapeutic. After all, Creations perfection is worth emulating; is it not?
I suppose for my latest sort of inspiration I would have to fall into the later group. Because all i can think about for my next painting is an image. Something that seemed to burn into me just a few hours ago while the world was still dark.
I was just in middle of having dinner with friends. Enjoying that fact that all of summers heat had fallen away. It was weather much like now. Chilly. With just the lightest bit of rain at times, and the nights sky was layered over with a dense fog-like cloudiness. The neighbor hood where my friends live was quiet. We stood out on the porch and smoked. Thick gray effusions escaping from mouth and nose... Little cloud children that died off before getting to meet their parents in the sky.
It's a woodsy neighborhood... next to a city park. The terrain is hilly, so the houses run in a stuttering curve following the asphalt road. On this night the smell in the air was that damp smell of grass and trees, but the coolness of the air rendered it faint.
The image that stayed with me was the sky. That sky that was just a ceiling of fog over a quiet city. That sky that have been shot through with a bruised purple-red. The street lights and reflections of the burgeoning city beneath it had poisoned it with color... un-natural, but beautiful none the less.
In addition to this dying sky, there are branches.... fingers and hands of the trees that have been here far longer than i have... and will be here far after i leave.
Those colors and lines. They are what stayed with me. The sky with that hue that suburbia either doesnt notice, or doesnt care about... and the sum of it all seemed to tell me something.
Hard to understand at first.... it was only a feeling. A quietness. A sobriety. And i didnt think all that much of the feeling at the time, because i didnt understand it. Social decorum demanded my attention and the evening carried on.
But the trees and the sky. They left me with that feeling. They had a message.... or the seeds of a message that i couldnt quite grow yet.
It's this self same feeling that i hope to convey in one of my next paintings... and perhaps in the process learn what the alien sky, and black trees meant.
