Inspiration found in Nature - Little Deer Isle
Inspiration is finding ideas and purpose in places other than expected. We recently spent a couple days and a night at the Oakland House Cottages in Brooksville, Maine. From here you look out across the water towards Little Deer Isle. I had never seen or been on the Deer Isles, even having lived in Maine for 12 years. Jeannette spent a week at Haystack studying jewelry, so she has been here.
I'm not going to try and explain the landscape, the photographs should do that. What I do want to contemplate, and what surprised me about the trip, was how the landscape brought about new artistic ideas related to weaving baskets. Of course I've felt inspiration before, but seldom so often and so quickly. In each set of photographs, photographs primarily of my family exploring this landscape, a seed of an idea took me beyond the physical location, and made me think of potential forms, colors, and textures...and I felt compelled to capture these feelings and ideas in my art.
Inspiration is at once was exciting and challenging. So many ideas, and then ideas about those ideas, going through my head. When I look at the photographs now I am excited but also daunted by what lies in front of me. How do I begin to reflect the beauty found in nature? (Does that sound too cliché?) I am sincere in my desire to capture the greens of the seaweed, or the Herculean effort of a tree to break through solid rock, or the contrast between stones, or the rippling reflections found in the water. I don't want to describe these sensations and moments in words because they are so complex and layered I don't think my words could capture it all. Rather, I need to capture them at some level through my art. (I find it very odd to be speaking about art or even thinking of myself as an artist. I suppose I should write something about that.)
My experience here makes me think that a series of baskets based in color, texture, and the intersection of natural materials could be an exciting exploration/investigation/creation.
