ArtBistro

Tell me about places that inspire you... I am a HUGE travel nut, and I am greatly inspired by place. I want to hear about other places that you travel that give you the most inspiration for your artwork.

Mine are:

Lake Superior

My family goes back a few generations here, even though I've never lived here. We came over from Cornwall to work in the mines in the Copper Country, on the Keweenaw. It's now full of forest, dead mining towns, and old rusty mining shafts that peek up from the trees. The lake watches them, like a frozen ocean. I love it and it is very inspiring to me, but also very haunted.

Ghana

I traveled here last year and spent four months at the University of Ghana in the Accra area. This was a huge jolt from my Twin Cities home, and learning how to live in totally new kind of city brought a lot of loves and a lot of frustrations. But it pops out in my work continously, espeically my marker art, which is full of trotros (Ghanaian minibusses) and cities.

Here's a link to my gallery...

http://artbistro.monster.com/albums/84480-marker-work

Check it out and tell me about your most inspirational places!

Mmmmm, Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada...

My favourite place... I feel like I've returned home and I'm in the right place where I should be everytime I go there.....

New York has some places. It's mostly urban but the inside of malls sometimes look like castles!

Prospect Park is nice and so is the Botanical Gardens scattered throughout the state.

I suppose the inspiration mostly comes from seeing something that relates to what we like. But really, you can find it anywhere. Everything is capable of giving you an idea. That counts as inspiration too (right?)

Though for drawing, music and other art as well as even the weather are good objects of inspiration.

VENICE  - ITALY  - and if you are young and in love you  feel  in the seventh heaven....

But you have to choose not so crowdy season  - perhaps  October or March ....

Venice for sure... I've never been there but I hear it is spectacular. However, I also hear that if you're not there for serious tourist purposes, it might be a little dreary. That and I watched some discovery chanel special on how Venice was sinking. Who knows.

South Africa sounds really inspiring... I mean just the reality of all that fancy stuff right next to the old townships, and then 100 miles out there's the bush... I'd like to go someday.

 Many places have inspired me, including galleries and museums in California and other parts of the world.

One aspect of my work is landscape painting. I like going on site. Sometimes its was a short walk to the ocean when I lived in Santa Cruz, other times it could be a camping trip in a desert hundreds of miles away, or a Summer I spent in Florence as an art history student.

One place of many that inspired me took a bit of walking and crawling under fences. It was on top of a hill in the Almaden area of San Jose. It had interesting trees, indian caves and rock formations and some big and intimate views. It was isolated and the city felt far away. I went there several times to work on paintings.

Here are two paintings from there:

http://artbistro.monster.com/photos/2093134-almadensan-jose-2?album_search%5Bmember_login%5D=brokencolor

http://artbistro.monster.com/photos/377793-almaden-san-jose-1?photo_search_params%5Balbum_id%5D=21642&photo_search_params%5Bcategory_id%5D=&photo_search_params%5Border%5D=position&photo_search_params%5Bview%5D=album

Other inspirations have come from more pedestrian areas or objects like neighborhoods or signs.

Places that inspire...wow...there is so many.  I love being near bodies of water, in the Forest, the mountains, any city downtown in the evening and early night, and any place brand new.  Going over to a friends place to hang out.  Church on a special occaison.