All art is a collection of honest attractions. All of your memories and experiences are, to some degree, recycled onto the canvas. What we absorb from the world influences what we release. I believe the creative block is something that can be overcome quite easily, it’s just a matter of looking and paying attention. Let’s begin this musing with a quote by filmmaker Jim Jarmusch:
Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery — celebrate it if you feel like it.
“In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.”
You are surrounded by ideas as you’re reading this. It’s a matter of harnessing them. At this exact moment inspiration can be found without much effort. The color palette of every surface around you, the shapes and contours of objects and architecture, the light and shadows entering your space, are all starting points to a painting, or a design. While it’s common to overlook everyday occurrences, you may be surprised by how much inspiration is already near you.
If one is a filmmaker, then watching films is part of the work in being a filmmaker. If you are a musician, listening to music of others is part of the process — a constant effort in curious observation – rather than simply passing time. Now this goes to say if designers are always immersing themselves into bad design, chances are they’ll create bad design. If a painter does not explore curations whether it’s on a virtual or physical canvas, their canvas may remain blank.
One of the most familiar clichés any creative hears is, “practice makes perfect”. For example, the idea that the photographer must take around 10,000 clicks of the shutter before they arrive to their unique voice. While this number is arbitrary to some, it is true that a continual awareness to exploration, not just for the sake of “being somewhere new”, is a productive method of note-taking and exploration. Everyone has a different length of careful observation in what they find beautiful. If you’re not making art a familiar retreat then the canvas will of course remain empty.
While going to all the museums and art curations is important, another easy to do tool is also at your disposal: taking breaks in creating. Allowing time for you to regenerate and soak in everything that is happening, is part of the process. Taking a break to rest, while observing art, is an important piece of the puzzle of the continual process in creating anything.
It’s easy to become overwhelmed with the vastness of visual information and an infinite imagination. You can look at it this way: your eyeballs have a focal length of a 35mm camera lens, therefore our entire world is shaped by how we view it in this scale. This can be a common ground for everyone, so regardless of what art you make, its delivery will always be within the confines of the human eye. Now the more tricky part, the mind’s imagination, an archive of everything you’ve ever come into contact with and all of the past that has followed it. The lengths of human imagination may have the analogy of the deep expanse of the universe, something that is continuous to the farthest reaches.
Some are naturally born with viewing the world closely with a reaction. Some gradually learn it and others may simply never give it a look because they’re floating on endlessly, or whatever the hell they’re doing. The point is: even if your next masterpiece hasn’t arrived, it is crucial that you feed your eyes and ears with art every day, at all times. It should be part of your meditations, your rituals, and your diet.
Let’s pull out your favorite film. This can lead to an entire culture of art. For example, listening to the soundtrack and then exploring each artist featured in it while also observing their album art, can create a path in which you discover more art that you’re attracted to. Finding some aspect of the film that really connected with you, let’s say the styling of the clothing, and checking the credits for who did it, and then observing their portfolio of work, their inspirations and influences. It’s all a matter of staying curious (and giving a damn).
It is pretty obvious that artists use their own life for inspiration in their work. And perhaps some with less interesting lives borrow inspiration from the biographies of others but did anybody stop to check where your inspiration came from? No. Nobody will poke into how you made something, it’s always about what you share at the end of the day.
When looking at the Modern Art period of art, a lot of derivative work was celebrated because it all became a tribute, or an adaptation, rather than copying. It is almost as if referencing another artwork was encouraged so that it showed your awareness to it.
Let's take a look at the Portuguese graphic designer and illustrator Bráulio Amado. Bráulio candidly shares his process of making poster designs on Instagram. He reveals his source of inspiration shows the final product side by side. Look here, here and here.
The message is simple: it's all a matter of attentive exploration. For example, there is simply no excuse with the discouraged saying, "everything has been done already,". With that being said, let's continue by tackling some pressures that prevent people from thinking creatively.
Absolve the pressures of authority by reclaiming your personal space. Yes, there are rules in the reappropriations you experiment with but this is a reminder that in your own personal space you can literally do anything. You can take a copyright and smash it into a thousand pieces. Without selling out too fast – here’s a Banksy moment that I find liberating:
Resist the idea that you cannot collage ready made items. At the end of the day, we are all collagists in some form. We’re remixing it all into our own.
I found The Remix Manifesto, a film by Canadian activist Brett Gaylor, nailing it right on the head. They laid out some strong points in regards to reclaiming what is yours and what isn’t:
Creativity always builds on the past.
The past will always try to control the future.
Our future is becoming less free.
To build something free, you must limit the control of the past.
We cannot be naive in our awareness of the past and what already exists, however there is a balance to this because the past is what informs us in what we proceed to in the future. In a design perspective, there are equally as many problems to solve as there were a hundred years ago, it’s only the tunnel vision of where we are now that says, “no, this is how you should design or create because everyone agreed,”. If everything is designed based on what already exists, it will only continue where we are now.
I believe 21st century design thinking is in a critically limited tunnel vision. If we were able to brainstorm in today's capacity before all of the aimless, extraneous, and over-consuming technology we're currently surrounded in, what would we build? The future needs to rewind it back a bit. Throw it all away, but also be aware of what it all once was.
So, where to begin? I have almost always found inspiration by taking a walk with my earbuds on. Especially in an urban area where there are all sorts of things going on. Whether it’s the landscape of the architecture, what people are wearing and the words that come out of their mouths, and the way each human interprets the same things differently on their storefronts, for example. Everyone is solving an everyday problem, and chances are something that you do each day can be interpreted radically different.
Now, in nature, it can be equally as arousing as a city. The sounds of birds, the weather in flux, the contours of a tree, the textures of the ground, etc. You can observe all of this literally, or you can allow yourself to think laterally by focusing on something that caught your attention and relaying it as you felt it when you saw it, or what it reminded you of. Whatever the method you choose to relay, it will be yours, nobody can take that from you.
Before we felt the “obligation to share” on social media, we didn’t have technology to give us the push to share, we simply were already generous and willing to share. With everyone carrying a camera in their pocket perhaps folks potentially be more attentive to where they are, yet it is still fleeting somehow. This is not quite the attention and care we had when we took pictures with analog film. This may be slightly concerning but here I am with a friendly reminder to put yourself out and in there — give it all a closer look, because you are already surrounded in boundless inspiration.
Happy exploring!
Banner image by Dan McPharlin
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