A few thoughts on textures, ideas, and everyday inspiration

Updated: Oct 22, 2020

I have always found looking closely at textures to be a great source of inspiration when I am making abstract work. Whether of the natural or man-made variety such as textiles, the wood grain in floorboards, cracks in a plaster wall or the layers of rock in a cliff face. I find that I am constantly surrounded by materials that seem more captivating the closer you look at them.

I have always found that whenever I am in the world I can find something interesting to look at and it has occurred to me that inspiration comes not only from the aesthetic of materials themselves but the perspective from which you observe them.

Creatives will often describe inspiration as a bolt of lightning that hits you out of the blue. A kind of vision in your mind's eye of a fully formed and finished piece. When this happens I often feel the need to put the idea down on paper with notes and sketches in case the image in my head fades like a firework and I forget the details of it.

At other times it is as though I can feel an idea beginning to form at the edges of my mind, as though it is slowly simmering up from my subconscious; and I worry that if I try and look at it for too long it will never boil and take form. I found a beautiful description of this particular form of inspiration recently when I was rereading The Northern Lights.

"The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly incase it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else"

Philip Pullman, The Northern Lights

I have come to the conclusion that all of these forms of inspiration come not only from luck but from the way we observe the world around us.

By looking at something that is new to you, or at something that might be considered "everyday" or mundane from a new angle, or simply a little closer than you have before, you are collecting the ingredients of an idea. You tuck them away in your mind until suddenly it finds that it can make something new, interesting and exciting with all those tiny observations.

Some of these thoughts were prompted by a show I recently attended at Compton Verney.

Compton Verney is an art gallery and beautiful parkland in Warwickshire. Whilst exploring the grounds I found a huge variety of textures to photograph for later use as source materials and inspirations for a series of mixed media pieces I am currently working on. I have included some of them here. Several of the images are close ups of a site specific work, Untitled Bolder by John Frankland, a huge piece that is as captivating from a distance as it is up-close.

Untitled Boulder by John Frankland

After walking through the park I visited an exhibition that is currently showing in the gallery, "Fabric: Touch and Identity".

Terme di Diocleziano - Liz Rideal

The works in this exhibition explored how we relate to the materials we spend most of our lives living in. Piece after piece encouraged me to look at the fabrics we see and touch constantly throughout our everyday lives from a new angle, or just to observe them a little more closely. Proving again and again that the most mundane of objects and materials can be used to inspire and create dynamic works of art.