We start today’s discussion with a quote from artist Chuck Close, who said “inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” This sounds a little confrontational, but the he continues with an explanation: “If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.”

We both agree that this is the way it works for us – we paint and the ideas come. If we simply waited for an idea, we both think nothing would happen -the  bolt of lightening would never strike. But we wonder whether there are some people who really do have to wait for the spark of an idea? Who have to respond to external stimuli rather than stimuli that come from within.

This leads us to contemplate how the pandemic has effected our inspiration, both in positive and negative ways. For many artists lockdown took away their source of inspiration but in many cases that resulted in new and creative ideas. Finally, we ask how you can find inspiration when it has gone, and offer some of our own solutions for getting past that stuck feeling.

Mentioned:

Alice’s Connected Artist Club: https://alicesheridanstudio.mykajabi.com/connected-interest

Louise course: https://www.louisefletcherart.com/

Gary Peters’ manifesto: https://garypeters.info/manifesto

This Naked Mind: https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Naked-Mind-Annie-Grace/dp/0008293430

If you have a question you’d like us to discuss, click here to send it to us

If you are enjoying the podcast this is an easy and inexpensive way to help support it and ensure it continues. The demands of making it each week can be challenging. Your support is allowing us to hire some editing help. If you’d like to help out with a one-time or a monthly donation, you can “buy us a coffee” us at Ko-fi.com

Contribute to the podcast here:

Follow Alice on Instagram @alicesheridanstudio
or Louise @louisefletcher_art

Credits
“Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

What kind of person are you? What are your personality traits and what are your quirks? This might seem like an odd question for an art podcast, but we both believe that it’s a vital one and in this episode, we get into why. For us, the ancient greek aphorism “know thyself” applies perfectly to art-making and may impact our style, our medium and our process.

If you love detail and precision, you may prefer slow and deliberative forms of art. If you like to pre-plan, you may be suited to complex printmaking or ceramic techniques. And if you love surprise and lack of control, intuitive abstracts might suit you to a tee.

Our choice of media can also be totally related to our personality preferences – want the element of surprise? Maybe inks or watercolours would appeal most. Love to work fast and furious? Quick-drying acrylics might be your forte. And finally, our process and workspace will work best for us if they are aligned with who we are.

Our discussion takes a quick detour into enneagrams, whizzes past the Myers-Briggs test, touches on the role of age, and wends its way through various rather tortured analogies – all in an effort to spark thought and discussion about this most important of topics. Above all, we are asking: where you think your personality is already in your work – and where you think there is room to bring more of yourself into your art.

Mentioned:

Shrine of Duty podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/53IJZX2FH4pLtrAZl9yR5m

Obsessed with Line of Duty podcast https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0742833/episodes/downloads

If you have a question you’d like us to discuss, click here to send it to us

If you are enjoying the podcast this is an easy and inexpensive way to help support it and ensure it continues. The demands of making it each week can be challenging. Your support is allowing us to hire some editing help. If you’d like to help out with a one-time or a monthly donation, you can “buy us a coffee” us at Ko-fi.com

Contribute to the podcast here:

Follow Alice on Instagram @alicesheridanstudio
or Louise @louisefletcher_art

Credits
“Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License