Inspiration is a funny thing. It comes in so many shapes and sizes. These days I'm trying to drink it up because I had a dry spell and while at first that is frustrating, after a while it just pisses me off. But it's there. I was thinking I should name a couple things that tingle my artistic spidey senses.
Death is a good one. People, yes, but I've noticed that lots more people have shown more than a passing interest in taxidermy and I can't help but smile since those dead, but somehow frozen-in-time animals have always held a great deal of fascination for me. My dad used to laugh about it. My husband, the hunter, finds it somehow gruesome that his vegetarian wife would want actual animal parts. The hide. The skull. The tail. He is all for the meat, and the rest, as far is he is concerned, the butcher can have to do with what he will. Which means, sell it for some one else to take. But the animal.. the breathing animal that was more than the muscle than gets eaten. It lay in soft grass and sometimes knew fear. What did those ears hear? What did it want to say? Don't you want to hold it and have it say it to you?
Dancing makes for good seeds of creativity... my sister and I are obsessed with So You Think You Can Dance. Hells yes, I said that. So yes, the strange growth of a dancer through the many forms of dance, but also-- Oooo. There are moments in dance. All dance. You see something. A movement that is sometimes big and sometimes would be otherwise mundane. A leap of joy or perhaps the way a dancer's shoulders fall in defeat that conveys such powerful emotion that you, watching, feel your own body react. You shiver or cringe. Maybe your heart skips a beat. All art should be like that, right?
Of course, there is more, which I could talk about endlessly if I wasn't exhausted:
The abundance of color that exists where least expected.
Tracks in the snow. Kafka leaves perfect circles of his bounding run. You can tell his demeanor just by looking at them.
I love the way the afternoon sun bends into the dead tree in my back yard. It was hit by lightening a few years ago and the entire thing died. It's huge, and leans threateningly over our two ridiculously old crab-apple trees.
I tend to focus on the natural things, I guess. The nature that surrounds us. The nature that we draw from within. Instinct. How we interact.
As a side note, I'm looking forward to getting back into posting more photos soon, but my camera is currently taking a break for some extra camera-person loving.
Kafka says, "Hi! Hi! Hi! Hihihihihihihihihihihi! Hi!" And licks the computer. Oh yes, he does. Enthusiasm all over the place for you! Don't you feel loved?
Pretty is a Process, 2011
Pretty is a Process, detail.
