I have talked, in previous weeks, about losing your painting mojo and then how I organise my ideas but I haven’t particularly touched on where some of my ideas come from. I thought that since we are spending our time together every week now, when I notice that something has inspired me, I would share it with you so that you can understand my work a little better and maybe it might help you to think about putting yourself in situations that you may not have considered before.

One of the things that might surprise you is that I don’t particularly enjoy going to exhibitions. I’m not being a snob or trying to be clever, I avoid them because no matter how interesting they are, I find other aspects of the arts far exceed them for inspirational value. I wish I had more time to crowbar them in but my time is limited so when I actively decide to seek out some inspiration, there are things that are higher on the list.

Now I have thought about this long and hard and I’ll write more about some of these aspects individually but here are my top 5:

1. Music

2. Live performance

3. Movies

4. The written word

5. First-hand experiences

6. (I lied, there’s 6 because I couldn’t leave this one out) Meeting my heroes

I realise that these might need further explaining but I don’t want to write a lengthy post, so I will save them for another time when I can explain in further detail or recount a story that I am itching to tell about a particular occasion, but let’s start with number one on the list.

Music. I’ll write more about it in specific detail another day but I think that this one is going to be quite common with you all. Our house is full of music all the time and we have eclectic tastes between my husband and me, we were brought up on classical, had parents that LOVED a variety of genres and with a guitarist in the house, you can’t move an inch in for collections of cds, vinyl, downloads and even 78’s. The studio even has its own speakers built into the ceiling so that I can blast my current favourite track out as loud as possible.

Why is it such a huge source of inspiration to me? Music can sum up a feeling, keep you company and be used to express an emotion, all the things that a painting can also do, so it’s inevitable that the two run hand-in-hand for me plus I have met some of my best friends because of music and every now and then I get to go and see my clever husband perform in his band and get a backstage pass.

What sort of things give you the most inspiration? I’d love to find out so that we can get to know each other better and in the coming weeks, I will elaborate more on the list as some of the things I have written may not seem to be clear. Leave me a message in the comments as always, Ali