WHEN IN ROME...

Acrylic on canvas,  3 X 3 FT.

This piece was originally inspired by a conversation following a friend posting pictures of handmade textiles from Oaxaca, Mexico. The bold, simplistic designs just struck such a chord within me. The patterns were unique and clearly native to the region, yet they reminded me of traditional arts I’d seen in other places, from other times.

Inspiration is an odd thing. It’s a rare thing, often fleeting. To describe it in its purest form… well, it feels uninspired.  I can’t replicate it to show someone. I surely can’t share it in a manner that one could touch. I’ve tried to excavate the source of it in those moments but to no avail. So, in inspiration’s stead, I stockpile. I mix colors, experiment with techniques. I study. I train myself to look beyond those things I readily see in my everyday life. I embrace my chance encounters with adventure. Any opportunity I have to add to my arsenals of experience and knowledge is fuel to the fire, when that spark of inspiration strikes. Travel is the perfect palette to combine all those things into exciting the mystery that is inspiration.

One of my first favorite authors, Mark Twain, once said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” Beyond Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn yarns, I’d venture to say many people who didn’t spend their summers in Missouri, which led to a fascination with storytellers from The Mighty Mississippi, don’t know that Mr. Samuel Clemens was a travel writer, as well. In point of fact, his nom de plume, Mark Twain, was first used in bylines about travel. It was through his time abroad and immersion in other cultures that he returned to America, ignited to be a changemaker, using his voice to speak against societal norms of inequality. Whether he found inspiration or inspiration found him, it was inflamed by travel.

This piece is about getting out of your head and into the world. It’s about the tapestry of experiences that can only be woven through walking in the steps of elsewhere. It’s about excavating the past to build upon expressions of the human condition. It’s about the footprint we create and observe. This piece was inspired by travel.