Under the Influence
A Creek in St. Thomas (Virgin Islands) (1856) by Camille Pissaro, The National Gallery of Art.
The environment you are in can shape you as a person and as an artist, giving way to expression that includes facets of place, time and people. Historically, art is as old as time, and the art world is constantly evolving and changing over the years, exponentially in the last few decades. With the internet, the art community is an endless sea of incredible creativity, connected by technology. People around the globe are able to connect and show off their work through sites like Juniper Rag and social media outlets like Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and many more. Digital sharing has opened up new possibilities for artists from all over the world. Innovative strategies for showing artwork can be found everywhere you look. Each one of these places is unique. We believe that growing a community of creatives and like-minded people that appreciate art can open doors, create conversations and move us all forward in a quest for belonging to something greater than our little ecosystems of our offices and studios.
Another strategic way to share your art in person is to attend exhibitions, art festivals, and conferences removed from your safe zone of home. Depending on your budget, traveling can be a game changer for your creative outlet and strategies for expanding your inspiration and your contact list. Travel influences art in so many ways. Whether you are focused on travel for the sake of an art experience, a day trip to a museum in the next state, or you are just taking a break and traveling to see the world. We get caught up in our days and sometimes forget to make time for travel. Our world is amazing, but sometimes we don’t realise this until we change our perspective. Travel can demonstrate how beautiful, difficult, or how different life and our environments can be. Inspiration is nurtured through looking at things through a new lens and this can spark creativity. It also drastically affect the art that we make. Our minds can become open to endless possibilities. Perspective broaden and this can promote growth in creative pursuits, no matter what kind of creative you are. Learning about other cultures, languages and food as well as seeing how transit systems operate, architecture shapes place or how simplicity can be so remarkably comforting. Travel can forever influence the art and the artist themselves.
Most creatives are acutely visual and tap into sensory stimulation in ways that non-creative thinkers do not understand. Smells, shades of colors, temperature and elements of being in the moment can create imprints. Beyond the eye, the experience of being in a place and understanding history, time and politics can also shape our trips. Creative thinkers somehow push beyond the screen of what is obviously before them and dig deeper into the meaning of what they see. Who came before them to this place and who will follow? Return trips to the same places can be incredibly indelible on the artists as they seek to understand change.
These experiences get woven into the fabric of who we are. Mementos in our collection of materials to draw from when we need to. As an exercise, imagine getting through a rough patch in life and then traveling to an enchanting island paradise in the Caribbean. Lush and tropical, birds chirping, rainbows appearing from local showers every few hours. You have never experienced a more outlandish display of atmospheric splendor and even the rain is sensational. You get punch drunk from the overwhelming barrage of eye candy buffets. An artist would want all of those memories to sink in and become fixed in their creative arsenal. This place, a respite from daily life can turn into one of the most meaningful impacts in their art. Imagine next that you return home, refreshed and full of the energy of that island. Completely in awe of the depths of beauty of it all, and then, boom — it gets slammed by a devastating hurricane, the worst in its history. The storm wipes the island clean of recognizable structures, foliage and leaves families of new friends homeless, others injured or worse. Time stopped when you found this place and it stopped again when the hurricane hit, creating two impactful and emotional epiphanies. The linear progression of time and your memory is interrupted with a jolt. The pervasive emotional response now in relation to what impacted you in the first place. When artists are affected by something in their life, whether it is visual, emotional, or otherwise it often is reflected in their artwork. None of this would occur in my living room. Now, this place is a part of who I am as an artist and a person.
Taking time to allow new experiences to affect you and your work makes you grow and evolve. You don’t have to travel far. Just getting out of your normal routine, visiting a gallery or a museum road trip can invigorate your imagination. Throughout history, travel has had a significant impact on artists we all know. The concept of travel does not necessarily mean flying all over the world. Observe your surroundings. Think in terms of art on your trip to the grocery store, or at the movies. Your eyes are your scope, keep them open and maintain a curiosity to always find new art inspiration wherever you go.
FLOAT, detail
When the candy colors come out in your work.
Michelle May
