Day 1 - 30 Days of Inspiration

Hello friend and welcome to Day 1 of "30 Days of Inspiration" - yay!  I will be exploring with you the stories behind my creative process and what inspires me as an artist!  I hope it inspires you too and I look forward to receiving your comments and reflections - let's create a whirlpool of inspiration! Firstly, a brief introduction - I'm Claire Casely, I'm a mixed media artist (which means I work freely across all forms of art media) who lives in beautiful Devon in the South West of England.  I'm a single mum to boy and girl twins who are my main joy and inspiration! 

I've been an artist forever - as soon as I could hold a crayon I was away!  I believe everyone has infinite creative potential (its in our DNA) and I hope to inspire people to discover their creativity and to be brave enough to explore it NOW!  I hear so often from people the words "I would love to do something creative...maybe when I retire"  - well you have the power to do it now, this moment and to have it interwoven into your day to day life.  Creativity isn't a luxury, or just a nice hobby, its part of the soul to be creative!  Of course there are many ways to be creative - writing, music, acting etc and visual art is one of those many strands of self expression.  The body does funny things if we suppress creativity.  I was lucky to know from an early age that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. However its taken me a long and winding road to get to living my dream. I will talk about more of my personal experience later. 

One of the things that inspires my art is pattern and decoration. So today I'm sharing some of my visual and tactile starting points for creating decorative artwork and pattern.  One of my favourite artists is Matisse - I love his use of 2D space filled with pattern and colour, he was a rule braker and re-maker.  I identify with his creative perspective on the world as you may recognise in some of the artwork I have included here alongside Matisse's paintings.  I recently visited the Eden project and the plant and flower filled Biomes left my imagination over spilling.  I did some colourful doodles from memory after my visit (it was too sweltering and busy to sit and draw).  So the natural world often informs shapes, pattern and forms in my artwork.  I am also inspired by fashion and textile designs.  I have a huge box of fabric remnants that I enjoy tipping out and rummaging through.  I like to lay contrasting fabrics together, photograph them or collage them with other materials and use the collage as a starting point for paintings.  Contemporary artists who inspire me who work with pattern and mark making very successfully and inspirationally include:  Traci Bautista (book - Doodles Unleashed) and Flora Bowley (book:  Brave Intuitive Painting).  Have fun with pattern and decoration.  Its great to fill a couple of pages in an art journal (sketchbook) with pattern, colour copy it and then cut up the colour copies to create new shapes and patterns!  I used this method in my collage of Paloma Faith - FUN!
Have a great day.  Creative blessings xxx