Living life seems to bring more questions than answers, and yet it's all-at-once beautiful and redeeming in it's darkest places.
To me, art is like that, too.
Being an artist is terrifying: Expressing one's truth even when others demand answers. The truth isn't always pretty, doesn't always make sense, is sometimes more funny than pleasing, sometimes can't be explained succinctly... Yet, the truth, as art, is always beautiful in it's ability to inspire one to search deep inside for answers and reach outside for meaning.
I am inspired by
- artists who challenge truths. I might not agree with everything they do but I am inspired by their fearlessness.
- artists who seem to have styles/messages I try to convey. If they can do it, I know I can.
- artists who are having fun. Yes. Art can be fun.
Here is a short list of artists who constantly do this for me... artists who have got me through some dark times:
- Vincent VanGogh: for the dream
- Mark Rothko: for the depth
- Frida Kahlo: for making self-centered work okay
- Billy Collins: for making the mundane miraculous
- Odilon Redon: for the freedom in dream and myth
- Yoshitomo Nara: for the angst in the innocence
- Wassily Kandinski: for the child like expression
- Paul Klee: for the form
- Paul Cézanne: for the color
- Gustav Klimt: for the ornate
- James Jean: for making comic-like art high brow
- Audrey Kawasaki and Lady Gaga: for the dark and sexy
- Lykke Li and Zola Jesus: for the vulnerability and the raw power
- Es Devlin, Yoko Ono and Cai Guo-Qiang: for concept delivered through total experience
- Alexander McQueen: for delivering the dark and the honest through beauty
- Friends With You and APAK: for youth, wonder, joy
- Fafi and Koralie: for being badass females and painting them, too
- John Steinbeck: for his simple but beautiful story telling
- Jonathan Safran Foer: for the stunning, sweeping narratives about the simple and commonplace
- Johannes Vermeer: for making it okay to find the beauty in the commonplace
- Louis CK: (see Billy Collins)
Hope this is inspiring to you, too.
