Inspiration of the Week

This whole week has been busy and crazy culminating in a fantastic get together here with my friends from our writers’ group yesterday. A few days ago, I attended a talk by Heather O’Neil presenting her recently published book “When we lost our heads”, which I have not read yet.

But this painting is what most enthralled me this week.

Les grenades 2 / Pomegranates 2 ©2022Suzanne Bélair, 8 X 16 in (20.3 X 40.6 cm)

I think the fact of taking on a new student painter, seeing her working with spunk and determination, gave me a boost of creativity to get my own painting going again. Since I finished the elephant portrait, I felt depleted, like I had nothing left to express with my paint brushes. This painting was so emotional and inhabited my every thought for many months. After completion, I felt drained of ideas, of drive to start a new project.

This is why I decided to revisit the artworks I had put on hold for some reason, for lack of courage or ideas to complete them.

I have many of these, some large projects I need to spend hours on and some smaller ones that need minor adjustments. But I realized that my skills keep on growing every day so what seemed daunting years ago now feel natural and evident.

Here is what this one looked like before I got to it this week. It had been put on hold since 2013!

I also think that since these have been moved, some of them twice, they must be important somehow and it is because they demand completion.

They are lined up, even piled up along a wall of my studio, silent watchers of my daily insecurities and whispering to me to JUST DO IT as the saying goes, adjust that color, detail this area, don’t give up.

I can hear how they are getting louder, bolder and my spirit is listening. I think back to Wednesday evening when Heather said something that stuck with me. And it is that you must listen to your ideas, you must take them seriously!

And I thought how logical and true! If you don’t take your own ideas seriously than who will? Isn’t it what life is all about? To follow your ideas and bring them to reality?

I’ve decided it is time to take my ideas, the whisperings in my ears, really seriously. When I think back, I see how I have spent years listening to my inner critic and dismissing a lot of my ideas because of it.

This small painting, from my Reflections series is now finished. I’d say she’s happy I gave her the attention it deserved and needed this week.

Thank you for reading and Listen to your creative voice and remember that: