Inspiration

People always ask "Where do you get your inspiration from?'.  I think its true that myself along with many other artists find inspiration in different ways on different days.  For me, inspiration rarely comes when I wake up in the morning and more often than not it will only show up when I put myself to work and get engaged.  Picasso said "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working".  This is more often the case with me.  

This is not to say that I am an uninspired artist, it just means that if you wait for inspiration, it may not come and you will have "writer's block" so to speak... indefinately.  It is in the act of painting that inspiration comes, and once it comes it takes over everything... sometimes to the point where you loose track of time and your environment.  

Some artist's say they have a muse ... which I personally will never be able to understand.  I work alone, the way I like it.

Nathan Oliveira

You're sitting there with your muse and your muse is telling you something and you’re following it, and you end up the next day looking at it and thinking "what the hell was the muse saying to me?"
-Nathan Oliveira

What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.
-Eugene Delacroix