All creative endeavors are driven by inspiration; you may be inspired by someone’s beautiful website that drips with creative images and it energizes you to begin your next project. Maybe you read a poem that makes you stop the next time you pass the blooming roses, and that beauty sits with you the rest of the day, giving you creative energy. Some of us are lucky enough to work with creative mentors who teach their craft and train our eyes to see bigger and deeper and different. Whether it’s pinning all the images that inspire you from Pinterest (and then going on to make that cool stuff you pinned), stumbling upon someone else’s awesome thinking, or reading a poem about flowers, we are compelled to create when we are inspired. I think one inspiration leads to another – we are catalysts for each other. I read a poem about roses by Mary Oliver , looked at Christianne Taylor’s website the very same day, and was inspired to take pictures of my little Arabella, peonies in her lap, dreamy, peachy lighting. What is it that inspires you? Where do you go for inspiration… A magazine? Your best friend? Up a mountain? Within?
May you find inspiration today to create something beautiful.
When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention
by Mary Oliver
“As long as we are able to
be extravagant we will be
hugely and damply
extravagent. Then we will drop
foil by foil to the ground. This
is our unalterable task, and we do it
joyfully.”
And they went on. “Listen,
the heart-shackles are not, as you think,
death, illness,pain,
unrequited hope, not loneliness, but
lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety,
selfishness.”
Their fragrance all the while rising
from their blind bodies, making me
spin with joy.