Acrylic on canvas, Age 12 

 48" x 60"

 

Inspiration

This is the painting about inspiration. When we are inspired, we soar, yet we are focused. That is why inspiration seems so heavenly.

The young man is each of us at our greatest inspiration: a poet, a writer, a musician, an artist, a doctor, a scientist, an engineer, or a businessman. He might be a lawyer, a detective, a chef, a speaker, a farmer, an architect, or anyone who is unafraid to imagine, create and to persevere.

I painted the clouds to depict the challenges, and struggles in our decisions. The light in the clouds symbolizes enlightenment. I tried to depict effort through the man’s posture and action. Inspiration is just the start, but it is our effort that brings the inspiration to the finish line.

Ironically, this painting was one of the most challenging for me. And as I was working at it, at times I felt far from inspired. It took me the whole summer, and five completely different backgrounds.

Inspiration and talent, I found out, is not enough. Perseverance, effort, focus and universal blessing determines the end.

If I work, for example, on an idea for a few weeks and have a dead end, a block, that I cannot move at all, I switch to another idea until it works out. If the next idea of a particular image does not work out, I switch again, because I feel it’s meant to be something different and unexpected. When I paint in this mindset, the ending is always a surprise for me.

Many tours come from all over the world to my studio gallery and those that come back again and again are quite amazed at how much I change my paintings. Actually, there are at least a few paintings behind most of my finished paintings. And even though it still takes me from a few weeks to about three months to finish a story, the delay is my own experimentation. I stopped experimenting on sketch paper. I do that now right with my paints on the canvas or linen. Even for portraits. If there is a mistake, the mistake is huge, because most of my canvases are five feet long. But I do not mind that. I paint until I think it is right for me. Sometimes that affect is very realistic, for the purpose of conveying the idea precisely as I feel it. And sometimes that affect becomes quite impressionistic, for the purpose of a mystery where other people finish it in their own minds.

Once the painting is done, it is done. I usually hang it in my studio gallery and observe it for a few days, changing very little. Usually, just my signatures which I hide throughout many areas of my paintings.

 

Reflections for “Inspiration”

The views expect my walking.
The perspective expects my effort.

There is no communion,
no joy
and no happiness
without true effort.

Mature thought
crosses all dimensions
and efforts.

The purpose of a vow
is quitting on impatience.

When both of your palms are in chalk –
you are a dreamer!

Inspiration is faith:
when unreachable is already reached
and inconceivable
is already conceived.

It is an effort
to make everything simple
for others.

Imagination
cannot be stopped
even with a bullet-proof mind vest.

Empress of all passions is love.

Whatever you create exists.
But without your possession.

Those that hunt migrational imagination
and wish what never could come true,
change impossibility to possibility
and become complete.
And become enough.

Imagination is a pathway for each broken art
and for each broken heart.

For a dreamboat,
even the waves show charts of direction.

Hope is a knot in a rope
that keeps us from falling down.

Everyone starts believing light
only at work.

Effort always crosses
the finish line.

 

Akiane