4 September 2023
2023
A s part of the launch for Inspire Joy I'm starting new series on here! It's called "Find Inspiration in the everyday" I think it fits in with my life and what I hope to share with those following my creative journey. There are always new things to explore and discover in this world which is part of what makes life so exciting! Hopefully these journal entries will give you a glimpse into my life and my heart for creativity as well as lots of new ideas and inspiration for your own life. For this entry I wanted to talk a little about inspiration and what it means to me.
Inspiration Definition:
the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative
A sudden brilliant or creative idea
---- The Dictionary
I like to think of inspiration as something you can find almost anywhere. Something that sparks a thought or idea that starts a chain reaction of creativity in your brain and then motivates you to take action. There truly is beauty all around us if we take the time to look, which is something I love. Often times life gets so busy that I think we can start to forget that there's lots of inspiration everywhere we turn. So here are a couple stories of times I got inspired by something in my everyday life!
Just a little while ago, I saw this blue cup in the cupholder of an orange rocking chair and the sunlight was catching the glass just right so that it was almost glowing. It caught my attention and I took a picture of it, which then inspired me to go through my camera roll and find all perfect color combinations and everyday things I captured that I found beautiful.
The idea for another project of mine "Reflecting" came in a different way. I had little pieces of what it would become over time and slowly they came to fit together and then all at once. The whole concept for reflecting, in a way, came from the accumulation of my life up until that point/different pictures that represented moments in time. I would say that although inspiration for me mainly comes in the form of a random surprise or a sudden realization, finding inspiration can also be a proccess. It can happen over time. Just like how something you might not even notice now could be important later on or moments build up to a big event, sometimes inspiration takes time to build into the idea that it will become and the action you will take.
Here's my artist statment for "Reflecting" just for fun :)
Reflecting. What an interesting word. As I was thinking about this one day, I got this concept of creating a piece of art that would represent all the years of my life up until now and then beyond. In many ways this piece would be a reflection of who I am. The idea was to have different painted squares with objects that represented each year of my life so far and that they would be mounted on a mirror. The piece in and of itself would have layers of different meaning, as well as a play on words: reflecting on past events and a literal reflection. As you look at (and into) this piece, my hope is that although the squares represent my life that you’ll be able to find pieces of your own here too. And that this inspires you to reflect on different events and things in your own life and see how far you’ve come. The last square is my representation of the future. Blank. You don’t know what’s to come, but it’s going to be a masterpiece when you look back.
At times it can be hard to be inspired, motivated or optimistic. I definitely have moments where I tend to close out inspiration. Maybe It's unconsciously or maybe I know I'm doing it, but the key is to not stay in that place. Creativity is one of the best ways for me to process things, so a lot of times some of my most creative ideas can come from something hard I'm going through or have gone through, and sometimes that can make a piece of art that much more impacting, because It's personal. Even with art that doesn't come from a hard experience, the same thing applies. Whenever someting you create is personal to you and you really connect with it, people can see that and It's powerful.
All in all whether it's something out in creation, a concept, piece of history, art, music, liturature... almost anything, I hope this inspires you to keep a look out for the beauty of life all around you and the creative ideas that surround you. Who knows? You might find that something new catches you by surprise.
------Stay Inspired
Elianna Radin
