I believe it was Pablo Picasso who said, “Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.” How was that guy so profoundly talented in art and wise with words all at the same time?  

Picasso was absolutely right about inspiration and I believe that insight comes from experience.  Sometimes we don’t feel “inspired” so  we sit around not making anything at all. If we stay away from art long enough, we fall deeper into the pit of uninspired self-pity and make outlandish claims like “maybe I’m not really an artist,”  or  “I am so uninspired, I have nothing to say.”    Or my favorite, “I have artist’s block.” 

This is what the great artist Chuck Close had to say about inspiration. “The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning 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. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”             

I believe that Picasso and Close are trying to tell us that if we would treat our creative pursuits like a job, you know, get up, get dressed and “go to work”, we would be a lot more inspired just by being in our work environment.  Wandering around in the fog of our busy lives wishing we “had more time” for art is simply not productive.  

When my children were young, I made a lot of excuses as to why I was not making art.  I would promise myself I would make more time for art when…. the babies are older, the youngest went off to school, we have a bigger house with a studio, we have more money, I am working less and on and on.  I am guilty of all these lines and not particularly proud of them, but alas that was my life for a very long time.

At some point, I got tired of my excuses and realized my art career was passing me by.  I sat down with myself and had a heart-to-heart with my inner lazy artist and made some very big changes. Here are some things I did to overcome artist’s block and remove all the creative roadblocks obstructing my way.  

One of the first things I tried when our house was small and our children were young, was work at my kitchen table.  I made just a little bit of art, but honestly enough to keep me happy while I watched my kids.  I know, I know, totally ghetto, but it got me through many years of defeating diaper changes.  I also slept very little back then.  I could get by on three to four hours of sleep many times a week, so I could make art in the quiet dark of night.  At work, I drew my own drawings as much as possible as the demos for my art students.  I had a crazy habit of throwing away my demo drawings every class period.  This forced me to draw things again and again to get in some good practice.

Now that my kids are grown and I have a nice large studio just up the stairs, I truly follow the Chuck Close edict and Pablo Picasso’s advice to get-up and get myself to work.  Every day I offer a prayer to the art gods that they will send inspiration down to meet me along my way.   Inspiration, where art thou?