After yoga one day I snapped a photo of a fence post with torn wire fencing and the Naples yellow field behind was cut by the pale blue winter sky. I didn't see the connection then but as I drew from my image I saw the correlation to my plates.
The last few afternoons I have walked with my camera looking for the intersection of bare tree trunks and the fields beyond. The sky weights the hills down. These colored drawings are becoming clear fodder for my slab plates.
Urban myth has it that when Bob Dylan first heard the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, he only made it through the first few songs. He turned it off afraid his own creative process might be influenced or blocked by the inspiration of the Beatles. I find that I need to look at lots of stuff. I need the stimulation of other artists and visions to translate and focus my own ideas. My motivation grows by seeing other versions of excellence. I remember being inspired by Sean Scully's paintings when I saw them at the Met a few years ago. He opened my eyes and heart to brushy stripes of resonant color. I am revisiting my horizon plates and interrupting them with fence posts, tree trunks and window mullions.
The last few afternoons I have walked with my camera looking for the intersection of bare tree trunks and the fields beyond. The sky weights the hills down. These colored drawings are becoming clear fodder for my slab plates.
Urban myth has it that when Bob Dylan first heard the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, he only made it through the first few songs. He turned it off afraid his own creative process might be influenced or blocked by the inspiration of the Beatles. I find that I need to look at lots of stuff. I need the stimulation of other artists and visions to translate and focus my own ideas. My motivation grows by seeing other versions of excellence. I remember being inspired by Sean Scully's paintings when I saw them at the Met a few years ago. He opened my eyes and heart to brushy stripes of resonant color. I am revisiting my horizon plates and interrupting them with fence posts, tree trunks and window mullions.Last weekend I was also very taken by a series of images called Sunday walks and Shower songs by Leanne Shapton the former art director for the op ed page at the New York Times. If you have time you should check them all out.
I use to be timid about looking at too many other potters work, afraid that somehow my own vision would be stifled. But over the years, I have seen so many wonderful expressions, some very similar to mine others totally antithetical.
My belief is that we're in this creation business together. We're suppose to bump elbows, interchange and not worry about influence. The same vision expressed in five different people, express differently.
The other joy is when you see an artist, whose work so closely resembles yours, and yet you know it isn't possible to have been stolen. The joy is recognizing the synchronistic cosmic energy moving within all of us.