Inspiration is all around us, anywhere we look, there is potential for something to set our creative minds afire. So often, a simple walk outside in the early morning hours has influenced my art - whether it was the shadows of a barren tree, the dynamic colors of a sunrise, the sweet smell of thawing earth, or a simple birdsong as nature awakens for the day. For this reason alone, I knew when Tina Walker introduced the concept for beautiful minds inspiration collaboration, I was thrilled to join in.
You can find Tina's post here with links to all the artists that participated.
I chose Mary C. Nasser, artist, as my inspiration. Each opportunity I have to admire Mary's art, it takes me to places afar. More often than not, those places involve peaceful seas and gentle breezes, warm hues of blue and green, reminders of sailing the Caribbean Sea many years ago with my family. Much of Mary's art involves collage. She uses vintage elements-charts, maps and text, as well as stencils. Mary has a line of stencils with Stencil Girl Products, a few of which I am fortunate to have among my supplies. For my project I created three mixed media postcards inspired by Mary's style and colors, as well as some recent pieces she created as a creative contributor for the Painted Paper Project. You can find Mary's blog post for her Painted Paper Project: mixed media postcards here.
This is a picture of Mary's pieces for that project:
For each of my postcards, I began with either a partially collaged or plain 6" x 9" base and introduced the Navigation Chart large mask with stencil. I wanted to create a series of pieces, not three replicas, thus allowing my "inspiration" to flow from one piece to the next and blend into my own "style" of art. It was important to me that my pieces for this collaboration be inspired by Mary's work, not copies. For me, inspiration is a tiny spark that sets my creative mind spinning, sometimes that spark is clearly reflected in the result and other times, it is hidden, a simple driving force.
Once all three pieces had this initial layer introduced, I then focused on each one separately. Its interesting to see how my first postcard most closely resembles (in my opinion) Mary's work. As I continued to work through each piece, I began to notice more of my own style, while still carrying Mary's inspiration.
It was great having the stencils in varied sizes so that I could layer them within the piece, working from largest to smallest. All of the postcards share a common focal point, the Ancient Mariner's mini mask with stencil. This is one of my favorite stencils in this series, and has always reminded me of the bones of a boat.
I really enjoyed working on this collaboration, it is not often that I set out to have something in particular "inspire" me. So often you hear of artists having a "block" and I believe this would be a wonderful way to work through something like that.
I hope that you can check out the StencilGirl® Talk blog to see the other amazing inspired projects created for this collaboration. You can get to the post by clicking here.
Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by today, I really appreciate it.
there is inspiration everywhere you look, I hope it creates a spark for your creativity.
~Ann
xxx
StencilGirl® stencils used:
Navigation Chart Large Mask with stencil (L738)
Ancient Mariners Map Mini Mask with Stencil (M269)
Navigation Chart Mini Mask (M271)
Navigation Chart Mask Small (S720)