Inspiration from your Surroundings

An IlloGuild question and answer

Inspiration comes in many forms but how do your own personal surroundings weave their way into your work?

I consider myself lucky to live in a quiet street in an accessible county not far from a major city. This offers micro and macro inspiration.

On the one hand, greenery and lots of it, is abundant in local parks. I enjoy watching the same trees lose their foliage in winter, stripped bare to their skeleton, only to sprout luscious foliage in the Spring.

My 2 young children; many neices and nephews and my voluntary involvement in Scouting offer constant movement and exposure to how kids play and learn. This is great fun to include in illustrations.

A hobby of mine has always been to collect books and I could disappear into them for days at a time until friends start moaning that I am becoming too cognitive. Which basically means get out of your head and socialise!

So we move to the macro level..a 20 minute train ride into the city with landmarks, museums and shows. Previously I thought these experiences were not necessary to my being, after all, I commuted every day and it became part of the scenery from a London bus. I took it for granted and then Covid drove us all into our tiny nucleii for longer than was healthy.

Suddenly those lazy trips to the Med, adventures further afield involving 12 hour flights; foreign languages and Visas were realised for what they were - pure carefree luxury.

Despite all those beautiful sights, tastes and olfactory sensations, what creeps back into my work are the earthy cool tones associated with British weather. I like to use photos of bark and moss in repeating patterns as texture.

In the same way that several generations of my Irish family have grown their own produce and sewn their own garments, I derive great pleasure from digging in my vegetables and using messy traditional media, mixed with textile art.

If anything, there is too much inspiration in my world, making it challenging to pick one thing and see it through. Or that could just be my borderline ADHD brain.

But if I had to chose one theme to run through my art, one inspiration to look at daily, one word to chose for my brand, it would be kindness. To be more specific, loving-kindness or benevolence, as sought in Buddhism. I am surrounded by kind people: from my partner and extended family to friends and colleagues, neighbours and peers.

So perhaps the vegetable patch; park landscape; the diversity and distractions of the city; cherished memories of global travel and abundance of literature at my fingertips are all the materials to be utilised but the surroundings to be inspired by are the actions of those you care for.

How can you tell the story of benevolence in your art?