How to find inspiration for art

As an artist, one of the most frequent questions I'm asked is, "Where do you get the inspiration for your art from?" The simple answer to that, is from daily life...I find things that inspire me, all around me. Artists, too, can suffer from "artist's block", just as writer's can suffer from "writer's block". Finding inspiration for art doesn't have to be so difficult. Just consider your daily life, your past experiences and you are bound to find some inspiration for your works. Life experiences can be such an incredible resource of inspiration for art. It's a matter of looking at your life from a very different perspective to reach inside for that inspiration. The following is an example of how I found inspiration for my art based on a life experience.

The story of this piece is something you may find a bit amusing. It is a true story, however some minor details have been changed to protect the identity of the parties mentioned.

Back when I was still living in California, when I was pregnant with my youngest daughter and my older daughter was 12 yrs old, we owned a home in a decent middleclass neighborhood. Our neighbor, however, was one of those super anal types who was so concerned about appearances. As a salesman, he wore nice designer suits, drove a nice car, got manicures regularly. That is fine, it's his perogative to maintain that lifestyle. What bothered me, however, was his incessant insistance of imposing his lifestyle on me and my family.

We were going through a difficult time then. I was 8 months pregnant, but I was having some serious complications with the pregnancy, including gestational diabetes. On doctor's orders, I was bedridden. I wasn't even supposed to get up to get lunch, move to the livingroom sofa, let alone vacuum. My older daughter was an enormous help, caring for me as soon as she got home from school. She'd bring me water or tea, get me a book to read, do the housekeeping, then from my directions from the sofa, she'd cook dinner for us all, bring me mine and help me off to bed before she'd start in on her homework. My husband at the time was currently working on a major project for a client and had to put in some long hours on top of the lengthy commute he had.

Every day, my neighbor would go out and wash his shiny black BMW convertable in his driveway. Then he'd take a measuring stick and LITERALLY go and measure his grass, then go measure ours. Granted, it's not like we let our yard go to where the grass had gone to seed and was waist-high...he didn't like it if our grass was more than 1/2" taller than his. If ours was too high for his liking, he would come knock on my door and demand that I go cut my grass.  Never mind that my husband had to leave for work at 4:30 am and didn't get home until quite often, after 8 pm (long commute times in a major metropolitan area, plus he was working on a major project that required a lot of overtime). Never mind that I had complications with my pregnancy, including gestational diabetes, and was bedridden on doctor's orders. Never mind that my older daughter, at 12, was doing her best to take on the housekeeping, cooking, laundry, caring for me, etc in addition to trying to stay on top of her homework. I'd gently remind my persistant neighbor of these things and that my health and other things were of higher priority than worrying about the length of the grass.

 I would remind my neighbor of that and remind him that I only asked my daughter to mow the lawn once a week, which I felt was very reasonable, and that if he didn't like my grass being 1/4" too long by his standards, he was welcome to help out and mow it himself. Of course, standing there in his Armani suit, he'd refuse and go storming off, threatening to call the city to complain. It would infuriate him more that when my daughter did go out and mow the lawn, our lawnmower had a much lower setting than his and we could actually cut our grass shorter! Sure enough, he'd come storming over in his Bill Blass suit after taking his careful measurements and pound on my door. He'd then demand that we raise the setting on our mower or else we'd make HIM look bad since our grass was shorter and he'd just cut his grass the day before. With the best straight face I could muster, I'd then offer to loan him OUR lawn mower, so that he could have the length of his grass match ours. He'd turn beet red and claim that our lawnmower was a piece of crap and go fuming off, again threatening to call the city to complain. Ok, you have to understand that no, our lawnmower was nothing special, but it was a halfway decent self-powered mower we got on sale at Sears. It did the job just fine, especially since our yard was no larger than the size of a postage stamp (.13 acres, most of which was fenced in the back). His mower, on the other hand, was one of those very nice mowers, with enough horse power to make NASCAR drivers jealous!

This was nearly an every day occurrance. As a neighbor, I didn't want conflicts with this man, but at the same time, I wasn't willing to compromise what I felt was most important to my family at that time. I did my best to remain as polite as I could, but firm. I have no idea if he ever did call the city to complain about us, it wouldn't surprise me if he did. We, however, never received any complaints nor notifications that our property was being maintained in a substandard way.

Eventually, we decided to move and sold our house. Mr. DesignerSuit came pounding on our door when he heard we had sold our house. This time, I don't think I'd ever seen him quite so mad as he was that day. He was fuming and stuttering so much that it took a few moments before he could burst out with, "Why didn't you tell me you were selling your house?!?! I would have bought it! I could have used it for investment property and rented it out! I thought we were FRIENDS!!!" I just blinked, then I couldn't help it, but I burst out laughing. It was just too much! I was laughing so hard, that I had tears streaming down my face. He just stood there in shock with his mouth wide open. After a bit of trying to compose myself, I said, between gasps for air and fits of laughter, "I'm sorry, but I have better things to do in life than to waste my time with the likes of you."

The moral of the story, is the creation of "A Cut Above". It is the representation I feel to show how sometimes, non-conformity is best and there are far more important things in life than "keeping up with the Joneses". In striving to maintain ones' values and retaining your individuality, you, too, can reach for those silver-lined clouds and rise above the rest. This life experience was what gave me inspiration for a particular piece of art that is now among my favorites.

After reading this story, I hope you can go back and take a new and fresh look at your life, finding your own inspiration for art. It's there, you just need to take a different view on things to see it. Not all of my art has such a 'colorful' background story, but each is pulled from my own experiences in life in some manner.

"Bunny" has an entirely different story behind it, but you now should have a pretty good idea of how one can draw inspiration from everything around you. Best of luck to you all, and stay creative!