Where Do I Get My Ideas?

I bet that almost every artist out there gets asked this question too many times to count:

Where do you get your ideas?

Each artist might have a slightly different answer, and even mine vary depending on the painting I'm working on. I'd like to be able to say that some angelic muse always guides my brush along the canvas and creating the perfect painting as if by magic, but unfortunately that pretty much never happens. Sometimes my ideas take months or years to mature, sometimes days, some take hours of research, some are just a hike through the woods away.

"A Moment at Sunrise" Oil, 18"x24"

Landscapes - Direct Observations

Walks, hikes, visiting interesting places, and just being outdoors in general inspire my landscapes. Morning or evening light on the mountains is a favorite for me. Yep, these paintings are pretty darn literal...they are a combination of my feelings, memory, sketches, photos, and experiences. I might move things around a bit to enhance the composition, heighten colors in an area and lessen them in others, or maybe add an animal or two. But the scene I paint is pretty much as I experienced it.

"Tough Guys of the Prairie" Oil, 18"x24"

Animals - Direct Observation

Many of my paintings of animals come about in the same way as my landscapes. I'm lucky to live in the western US where wildlife isn't too far away. Even on a usually-routine walk I'll see a Golden Eagle, Bald Eagles, coyotes, deer, or even elk. Sometimes I'll go out into nature to find specific types of animals to photograph and paint. The pose or gesture of an animal might inspire me to paint it later. Or maybe it's the landscape the animals walk through, or a particular moment in time that just feels like magic. Sometimes it's the attitude of the animals themselves that inspire a painting, as in "Tough Guys," above.  Often, I'll put animals from one location into a landscape from another, combining and rearranging elements to create something more artistic, more evocative of the experience than a purely literal painting.

"The Old Ones" Oil on textured panel, 18"x24"

My "Textures" Series - Dreams and Intuition

It's the "Textures" series where the creative process kicks in to high gear for me.

A little more than half of these paintings come to me out of dreams or meditative states. An example of one of these is "The Old Ones," pictured above. I'm not quite sure how this happens, how complete paintings simply show up in my mind and demand to be painted. These pieces seem to be mixtures of different aspects of my personality - varied interests, things I've seen or thought about, bits of history, myths, and many other things. Maybe it's just something as straightforward as Interests + Experiences + Thoughts + Incubation Time = A Painting. Or maybe, just maybe, there is some kind of mystical being like a muse that helps inspire us to create something truly new.

The rest of the "Textures" paintings are on-the-fly, intuitive combinations of things that just seem to go together. My biggest fascinations are history, cultures, stories/myths, and animals, so I will often intuitively combine various elements from a culture into a painting. A lot of research goes into some of these paintings too - researching the history, cultures, myths, stories, and animals helps these paintings "feel" more authentic to me. For example, I might make sure that a particular animal I depict has a range that overlaps the culture showcased in the painting. I guess it's the scientist in me who wants to make sure that the details are generally right!

How do I set the stage for this type of creative inspiration to happen?

I read and research constantly. As I said before, these things are passionate interests for me so I'm constantly reading about them. My library card is well-used, and I visit museums as often as I can. I just absorb this stuff like a sponge - not because I have to, but simply because I love it. If I wasn't a painter I'd still be reading about Lakota history, visiting Mayan and Ancient Pueblo ruins in North and Central America, and searching out new-to-me rock art sites.

Maybe what happens is that this information just knocks around in the back of my brain for a while until one day, my subconscious simply puts the "right" items together into a painting and voila! There it is in my mind's eye, ready to be put on canvas.

Or maybe there really are muses, nudging us along, helping us to create. Sometimes I like this explanation better...



All text and pictures copyright Nancy Rynes, 2014. You may link to this page, but please do not copy text or photos for any reason without my written permission.