The art of being inspired

by Mikkel Urup

How does one become inspired?

Being inspired is a necessity, especially for an artist. It therefore becomes essential to stay inspired, but how?

–An everyday routine can be very inspiring and something novel can be totally uninspiring. It depends on whether or not the incident has any impact on you.

You have to feeeeeeeeeeeel stuff to get inspired, you have to mentally be there and allow your environment to have an impact on you. Otherwise no go.

It’s not sufficient to merely reflect life as a mirror, you have to interpretate it.

A near mathematical circumstance seems to be present:

Lifeforce + Impression= An alive expression.

This little axiom allow us to discover circumstances which are not beneficial to an artist. All instances of lack of inspiration sums up to the abscence of experience and input.

I knew a painter who gave up his daytime job to work full time as a painter. Only problem was that without the input from contact with other people etc. he could not paint, he became totally uninspired. My advise to him was to go back to work, that did the trick!

The creative process

When the creative process has started an interchange between the media and the artist occurs. One senses how one work so far looks and compares it to one’s ideal in ones mind.

Then one tries to get it closer to one’s mental version or changes one’s mental version based on the new opportunities one has discovered while observing the artwork in progress.

Being in the middle of an creative process, one very often hardly notice time, lack of sleep and food. It seems like the normal needs of the body gets suspended.

One’s own style

Being in a state of inspiration is no guarantee for good artwork. It’s quite possible to have a wonderful feeling or concept in one’s mind, and at the same time have no idea about how to convey it to others through an art form.

First one have to master the general technical skills of the chosen artform. For instance being a painter, one have to know colors, how they mix and so on.

Then one must have developed one’s own personal preferences or language, unique to oneself and yet understandable by the receiver, the audience.

The essence

True art let the beholder experience something new or allows the beholder to rediscover something familiar.

What describes an artist is the same thing which describes an adventurer.

The longing for something intense, grand, revolutionary, new horizons maybe even other universes with different natural laws.

Wishing you all the best on your creative journey?

Mikkel Urup

https://mikkelurup.com/