Inspiration

My sale is now half over, and I've not yet put paint brush to canvas. Oil paintings have sold overseas, people are talking about possibilities of purchase, but here in my studio, I feel a stagnation. I always do when its been awhile since I've put oil on a canvas. There is a painting sketched in, ready to start on the easel, but I've not been able to even turn on the light in the studio.

What kind of things hinder inspiration? Why can some kinds of life challenges spur you on, and others, sometimes equally as dark or seemingly hopeless (offering fodder for the artistic temperment), just stop you dead in your tracks.

I walk around the highlands where I live, and see the beauty, see the passion that I've always seen in this landscape. I attend ceilidh's and concerts and am moved by the passion in the musicians. But it seems that the turmoil and fear that is in my heart (even as I try to ignore it), has this time stopped me dead in my tracks. What kinds of tools do we as artists have in our arsenal to get us through times such as these? For me, its mostly finally getting so sick of wandering in circles that I just turn on the music, pick up a brush, and start - on anything. Or I'll be so inspired (like I was in Morocco) that nothing short of picking up the loaded brush and starting an oil painting of whatever it was that moved me. But sometimes, it takes awhile to push aside the voices of fear, business, monetary worries, sales, so that I can feel what it is I see.

I hope that by the next time I have something to say, I'll have gotten to that point.