Why inviting inspiration in is essential (and not indulgent)
A lot of my posts are about having too many ideas - as an ADHD multi-passionate artist I know what it’s like to often be inspired by everything and end up feeling stretched too thin (or cursing that sleep is an essential human biological need).
In fact, one of the strengths of being a super sensitive or multi-passionate artist is the ability to find inspiration just through living life. Our heightened sensitivity to the world leads us to notice and value things others might overlook.
But today I want to talk about why it’s essential to carve out windows of time for the unexpected to inspire you too - or what I call ‘inviting inspiration in’ (though I doubt I invented that…I probably picked it up reading something by Julia Cameron or Elizabeth Gilbert).
While I’ve been working on my multi-passionate exhibition, I’ve found there have been ebbs and flows in my creative inspiration. Some parts of the exhibition came to me as fully formed ideas, ready to be realised and shared with the world. Others…not so much.
My biggest creative quandary lately has been what to do with all my 50 or so completed digital illustrations of UK insects. While some were completed for other projects, they are mostly the happy outcome of my hyper-fixation with moths and butterflies a few years ago. At the time, I was SO very into Lepidoptera - I found looking closely and drawing them hugely fulfilling, and I still feel very attached to them. But lately that work feels like it needs something new.
However these images were leaving me feeling lost as to exactly what it is I should do to freshen them up.
So I did all the usual things I do when looking for inspiration…Pinterest, looking through my natural history book collection, going on walks in nature (if the Cumbrian weather and the children's enthusiasm allowed). I made sketches, talked about it too much over dinner with my partner and asked my creative friends for their thoughts. But nothing felt…right. So for the time being, I simply decided to shelve them and focus on something less frustrating.
So fast forward to the end of August, when we went down South to stay at my Mum’s house to play on the beach, waste money on the arcades, eat ice-creams and visit lots of museums.
By the time we got to our fourth museum everyone was getting a bit fed up. As we walked through a gallery of boring 18th century art, my older child was close to a full scale rebellion and my toddler was demanding to touch everything (even though you were allowed to touch nothing). I was frustrated with not being able to read any of the info, and about ready to leave.
But then a painting caught my eye.
It was in an awkward spot too high up, on the very edge of the room next to the door but my magpie brain was immediately drawn to it - a still life of flowers surrounded by delicately rendered little insects. It was the first thing I had seen all day that I loved. I spent as long as I could looking at it, taking little video clips on my phone for a time when I could give it my full attention.
So when we went into the next room and I discovered that I was filled wall to wall floor to ceiling with similar paintings, I couldn’t help but shout ‘Wooooow!’.
I should add here - I have never been very interested in Dutch and Flemish floral still lives. In the past I'd probably have dismissed them quickly. But when I went into that room, something in my inspiration just went ‘YES’.
As I was enjoying the paintings my constantly questioning brain immediately kicked in, and I started thinking about how these pieces were the direct outcome of both colonial money and mindset (all valid thoughts).
But my inspiration still wanted to look at them for juuuust a bit longer, taking in all the different insect species, colours and imagining how much skill it would take to paint those pictures.
And suddenly, that work I was so stuck on all fell in to place inside my head. Like a rope ladder being thrown down for me to climb, I could see how all these different parts of the work connected to one another. And at the end of that trail was the good idea I had been searching for.
It's not this piece, but I felt like I needed another photo here!
Seeing as this post is already too long, I won’t tell you all about that idea today. But I wanted to share that story with you because it really made me think about how creative inspiration works.
I’m not suggesting you should now go to museums of artefacts, or galleries of paintings. You might hate them, or find other things waaaaay more interesting. I believe inspiration can be found in all sorts of places.
But I do want to encourage you to make a space to invite inspiration in, and to give it to permission to take you somewhere you perhaps weren’t expecting.
We tend to see inspiration as something we need to find, but sometimes we just need to make the space for it to find us.
Sending you kind wishes and creative magic,
Ellie 🌠