What Inspires You?
“Brain Retraining” gouache on paper, 16” x 12”, 2024.
Welcome to my blog, My Creative Process! It's exciting for me to take you along the creative journey with me and share what’s going on in my studio practice. There’s a lot more to “studio practice” than brushstrokes on canvas, though, so let me elaborate.
I’ve always believe that art is the intersection of four roads: intellect, inspiration, intuition and experience. You might be surprised to learn that the painting above, entitled "Brain Retraining", was inspired by my experience with chronic illness. Though I'm much better today, I have been suffering from mold toxicity (mold sickness) since 2010. Like 25% of the population, I have a certain set of genes which inhibit my body from recognizing things like mold as a toxin, and hence, I don't detoxify the mycotoxins.
This has made me very sensitive to mold because it makes me very, very sick. I can smell mold when others can't, and one night in a moldy house or hotel will make me sick within a few hours, and it lasts for weeks.
“It's not just the great experiences that inspire us to create, it's also the hard ones.”
Here is where the canary image comes in! The expression "canary in a coalmine" comes from the theory that the canary is more sensitive to the noxious gases than humans. So I sometimes feel like a canary-- except I'm sensitive to mold!
I called the painting "Brain Retraining" because this is a big part of how I've recovered from mold, and later Lyme. I went through a program which taught me how to retrain my brain so my limbic system doesn't react so strongly to triggers. I learned how to rewire new thought patterns through a lot of somatic work and visualizations. This program, called Primal Trust, has been a game changer for me in my healing process. Becoming much more aware of my thought process has allowed me to shift my thinking away from the pain and symptoms and towards what gives my life meaning: my art! 😃 🎨 It's a powerful process that harnesses our brain's neuroplasticity!
But back to INSPIRATION, it's not just the great experiences that inspire us to create, it's also the hard ones. Inspiration can come from almost anything, and for everyone it's different, and that's what is so cool about it. It's unique to YOU, and only you know what it is... and you will recognize it when you see/hear/smell/feel/taste it.
I find inspiration in all kinds of patterns and textiles, from rugs to lace to embroidery to decorative ceramics. I'm also very inspired by nature, places like Glacier National Park and Yellowstone, but also what's right in my backyard. I'm inspired by many other artists, authors, and research I do about the brain, vision, and healing. I've gotten TONS of inspiration from flying!
I recently started a practice of writing a poem every morning before starting my day, and I love doing it! I don't claim the poems to be great works of art, they're more like sketches-- immediate and very intuitive-- and I think that's why they work for me. Here's an example of a short poem I wrote, inspired by nature, language, and the inner work I've been doing in my somatic experience sessions:
Words
Words are tethers to our unconscious,
filaments willfully emerging from darkness,
like little white worms
rising to salute the daylight.
Returning to "Brain Retraining", the image of the airplane is my Super Decathlon, which I owned until 2018, when I bought my Waco UPF-7. I've been so passionate about flying-- especially aerobatics-- for years, and even though I'm not flying currently due to health reasons, I still love it, and think about it a lot. If you look at my website, you'll see many paintings and commissions that depict airplanes! I use aeronautical maps in a lot of my work, too.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this little taste of my creative process, and maybe it made you think about what inspires YOU. Seek out that inspiration, it's so good for you! I'd love to hear what you think of this content, and what you'd like to hear more about!
See you soon! 😊