What Inspires Me as an Artist

The age-old question of every artist is: what inspires me? Personally, I’m inspired by colour. I follow my method of Colour, Contrast, Expression and Composition (CCEC) and top of the list is…colour. Using colour, I express other things that inspire me, like music or the big ideas about the Universe.

Colour seems to have a taste, even a sound to me. The combination of Naples Yellow and Coeruleum Blue is so tasty to the eye that it seems edible.

It’s an emotional reaction, too. I feel the colour take over my consciousness and everything else seems to disappear. It’s like being immersed in an emotion, a different one each time.

Quinacridone Magenta makes me feel vibrant and alive whereas Prussian Blue brings out a feeling of wintery moodiness. Look at the electricity in the combination of Quinacridone Magenta and Cadmium Yellow above.

Naples Yellow is my favourite yellow because it is a softer warm colour, not as bright as Cadmium Yellow. Naples Yellow is a feeling of dappled sunlight, the taste of butter and the ebullience of the first day of spring.

Lemon Yellow is my second favourite yellow, when combined with Quinacridone Magenta it makes a bold and glowing red orange.

Cadmium Yellow is the sudden shock of the sun’s glare in my eyes. Mixed with Ultramarine Blue, it’s the bright green of the sun shining through transparent tree leaves. Naples Yellow mixed with Ultramarine Blue has a different effect, it is calmer and more grey, the feeling of watching autumn leaves fading in colour.

Contrast

Colour creates contrast between one object and another, and is in itself an object. I remember standing in front of a blue painting in a museum in Germany, just communing with the colour and how it took me out of my immediate reality into another dimension.

Contrast is the difference between one thing and another and in painting, it can be used to enormous effect. I love using colour studies as collages just to see how each colour works with the other.

How did the masters use colour?

Van Gogh was famed for using blue and orange in his paintings, these colours are on opposite sides of the colour wheel. To him, it was the blue sky contrasting with the yellow sun, the midnight blue contrasting with the orange streetlight, the yellow bales of hay contrasting with the workers’ blue clothes.

At the end of the day, what inspires me is continue the tradition of art in my own way and live with as much colour as possible.

What inspires you? I’d love to hear from you.