“To be an artist in the largest sense is to be fully awake to the totality of life as we encounter it, porous to it and absorbent of it, moved by it and moved to translate those inner quickenings into what we make. ”
Peaceful Evening, Carl Spitzweg, 1800s.
Perhaps one of the most common dampeners on creativity is adopting a purely mind-bound and abstract theoretical approach - trying to think our way into being inspired, imaginative and creative.
However seductive and culturally approved, a purely mind-bound theoretical approach is ultimately narrow and limited.
Hill and Ploughed Field near Dresden, Casper David Friedrich, 1824.
It precludes serendipity and the wonder of delightful sensory encounters that nourish our inner world.
A fruitful alternative is following the path of Leonardo da Vinci, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, and other immensely creative people who believe slow sensory exploration and appreciation of the world around us is an endless and reliable source of inspiration, imagination and creativity.
“The world is endless, not just in space and time, in great and small, but also in the different ways in which we can behold it. ”
Leonardo’s Sensory Delight
Lady with an Ermine, Leonardo da Vinci, 1489–91.
One of Leonardo da Vinci’s favourite mottos was saper vedere - knowing how to see, having the art to see. To deeply and sensitively observe and explore all aspects of the world.
Leonardo believed developing all the senses was a doorway to experiencing sensory delight - an experience of wonder, being charmed, enchanted, captivated, and entranced by something beautiful and poetic in the domestic, urban, or natural world.
“All art that lasts, that continues to move us, has successfully given expression to a poetic response.
The artist responded to something “out there”, in the world.
Then the artist focused on that element of the poetic, isolated it, honed it, reduced it, crafted it - so the ordinary and mundane are able to reveal the poetic.”
Garrowby Hill, David Hockney, 1998.
Sensory delight is a poetic response to a particular atmosphere, light, colour, shape, line, sound, scent, landscape, or vignette of activity - the myriad things constantly flowing through our world with the potential to delight.
And beyond delightful, certain sensory experiences evoke wonder and are meaningful, enriching, rejuvenating, joyful, calming, consoling or transcendent.
The Diver, Paestum, Italy, 470 BCE.
From the first cave paintings to now, beautiful and enchanting paintings, poetry, music, film, writing and dance have emerged from the artist's deep absorption in, observation, and transformation of poetic sensory experiences into art.
“Develop as a seer, as an appreciator as well as a craftsperson.”
Corot’s Sensory Immersion
Camille Corot Sketching at Ville-d Avray, Honore Daumier, (1808-1879).
Camille Corot, a landscape painter who predated and influenced the impressionists, painted outside his studio, directly capturing his sensory impressions.
Corot believed that “reality forms part of art; feeling completes it.”
In a letter from Switzerland in 1857, Corot gifts us a vivid sensory picture of the beginning of his painting day:
Sundown, Benjamin Haughton, 1865-1924.
“You know, a landscape painter’s day is delightful. You get up early, at three o’clock in the morning, before sunrise; you go and sit under a tree; you watch and wait.
At first there is nothing much to be seen. Nature looks like a whitish canvas with a few broad outlines faintly sketched in; all is misty, everything quivers in the cool dawn breeze.
Dingleton Farm, Maxfield Parrish, 1956.
The sky lights up. The sun has not yet burst through the gauze veil that hides the meadow, the little valley, the hills on the horizon.
The nocturnal vapours are still creeping in slivery flakes over the frozen green of the grass.
The leaves shiver with cold in the morning breeze. Invisible birds are singing beneath the leaves.
Sunrise, Maurice Hagemans, 1852-1917.
One sees nothing. Everything is there!
The whole landscape lies behind the transparent gauze of the fog that now rises, drawn upward by the sun, and as it rises, reveals the silver- spangled river, the fields, the trees the cottages, the further scene.
At last one can discern all that one could only guess at before.”
“Impressionism means taking inspiration directly from nature, trusting your senses rather than what you think you know.”
Monet’s Sensory Impressions
Morning on the Seine near Giverny, Claude Monet, 1897.
The painter Paul Cezanne said: “Monet is only an eye, but my God, what an eye!”
We can interpret Cezanne to mean that Monet was visually sensitive and frequently experienced sensory delight in many aspects of his immediate world.
“They are impressionist in the sense that they reproduce not the landscape, but the sensation evoked by the landscape. In the catalogue Monet’s sunrise is not called landscape, but impression. ”
Monet’s Studio Boat
Monet painted impressions of his sensory delight and believed: “Impressionism is only direct sensation. All great painters were more or less impressionists.”
Monet immersed himself in the world he painted. He painted eighteen works in his Mornings on the Seine series from a flat-bottomed boat anchored to the riverbank.
As the light changed from dawn to morning, he worked on one canvas after another.
“Sense of a fragile, transient moment - here the moment when the mists rise from the water and the forms of the world begin to take shape. ”
Become A Sensory Delight Explorer
“Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with their world.”
Spring Night, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1914.
Some of us, like Corot and Monet, work in the field - directly capturing our sensory impressions.
But most of us will rely on later recalling and savouring our sensory impressions - the light, atmosphere, sound, shape, scent, line, colour, and anything that piqued our interest.
Buckwheat Field, August Friedrich Overbeck, 1897.
A sensory explorer is open to the possibility of a delightful sensory encounter at any moment.
A sensory explorer will pause, linger, and slowly savour the sensory details of an encounter - forming a lasting impression and vivid memory.
After all, a vivid memory is a lasting impression of a sensory experience - a certain quality of light, a particular atmosphere, a joyful colour, poetic shape or line that, when recollected and savoured, kindles and sparks our inspiration, imagination and creativity.
Sensory encounters and experiences have always inspired artists. To illustrate, let's look at some artworks which were no doubt inspired by unexpected sensory encounters in the artist's immediate world.
Jean-Baptiste Chardin
Soap Bubbles, Jean-Baptiste Chardin, 1733.
Perhaps Chardin was idly walking to his local market one warm morning when he saw a young man in a window blowing soap bubbles.
Albrecht Durer
Great Piece of Turf, Albrecht Durer, 1503.
Maybe one summer morning, entering his studio, Durer suddenly noticed a beautiful clump of weeds growing by the door.
John Singer Sargent
Corfu, Light & Shadows, John Singer Sargent, 1910.
Perhaps this building was Sargent’s summer holiday painting studio or a quiet place to read and nap on a hot summer afternoon.
Clearly, he was delighted and captivated by the beautiful dazzling light and the play of shadows on the building.
Jeffrey Smart
Jeffrey Smart declared he was inspired by an unexpected encounter on a driving holiday in Eastern Europe in the 1980s - a train of colourful shipping containers passing through a birch forest.
Container Train Landscape, Jeffrey Smart, 1984.
“Suddenly I will see something that seizes me – a shape, a combination of shapes, a play of light or shadows, and I send up a prayer because I know I have seen a picture.’
”
Karl Blossfeldt
Karl Blossfeldt, 1865-1932.
Karl Blossfeldt was a German photographer and sculptor best known for his beautiful, richly detailed close-up photographs of plants.
Inspired by nature, Blossfeldt captured the fascinating and varied architectural shapes and details of plants.
“My botanical documents should contribute to restoring the link with nature. They should reawaken a sense of nature, point to its teeming richness of form, and prompt the viewer to observe the surrounding plant world.”
Karl Blossfeldt, 1865-1932.
Karl Blossfeldt, 1865-1932.
“Nature educates us into beauty and inwardness and is a source of the most noble pleasure.”
Maira Kalman
Maira Kalman, b. 1949.
The painter Maira Kalman walks her everyday urban world as a playful sensory explorer who discovers many delightful things that spark her creativity.
Kalman believes “wonderful things happen when your brain is empty.”
With an “empty brain” and no mind chattering (thinking, worries or a to-do list), Kalman is alert to the sights, sounds, aromas and tactile encounters that flow around her.
Kalman is open to the possibility of encountering wonder and delight while walking down the street or strolling in the park.
“Art....insists that we retract our ego, our sense of self, the cosmetics of identity and let it do its thing. We are in service to art, not the other way around.”
Maira Kalman, b. 1949.
To have an “empty brain” means the ego has to step back and relinquish control so we can be open and receptive to what we encounter in our world.
Art emerges not from our ego but from the interaction between three sources - our open and receptive self, our materials, and our surroundings.
We can enrich and expand our world by letting go of our screen-bound, mind-chattering, auto-pilot ways of moving through the world.
And instead, like Kalman, with an "empty brain", we become playful sensory explorers collecting beautiful, enchanting moments that nourish and kindle our inspiration, imagination and creativity.
Sensory Nostalgia
“Art is the act of triggering deep memories, of what it means to be fully human.
”
Moonrise, Templestowe, David Davies, 1894.
Perhaps on a summer evening walk, David Davies was particularly delighted by the curve of the earth and the big buttery harvest moon rising over a golden summer landscape.
Davies’ painting evokes in me a warm nostalgia for childhood summer evenings.
I want to enter the painting and walk along that sun-baked path toward my childhood home.
And as I walk homeward, the dry grass crunches underfoot, kookaburras laugh in the distance, crickets commence their evening chirp, and the warm evening air brushes my skin as day dissolves into night.
Davies has transmitted his sensory delight directly to me.
Davies has captured and distilled a moment of beauty and enchantment that continues to resonate.
And across time, a fleeting, long-gone poetic moment has sparked a delightful sensory memory and experience - a gift from the creator to me, the viewer.
“Art is all about poetry, about vision, about seeing the ordinary as poetic, and then communicating that vision. That is the artist’s job.
”
Kindling Inspiration Imagination and Creativity
Spring Interior, Charles Sheeler, 1927.
Beautiful and enchanting art does not require a grand and mythic subject matter.
Instead, delightful sensory encounters in our everyday world reveal beautiful and enchanting subjects and moments that spark inspiration, imagination and creativity.
Wind From the Sea, Edward Gordon, b.1940.
“It’s a fleeting moment that I’m after, a fleeting moment, but not a frozen moment.”
Distant Thunder, Andrew Wyeth, 1961.
An essential creativity kindling practice is having an “empty head” and slow, lingering sensory exploration.
We disengage from our chattering ego and break our trance of busyness and screen-scrolling.
We look out into our world, open and receptive, ready to encounter sensory delight.
And we pause, linger and slowly savour the delightful sensory details of a poetic encounter - the big buttery harvest moon, the scent of jasmine, the summer cricket chirping a twilight love song.
Consequently, we will enrich our inner world and creativity as we slowly and deeply experience beauty and enchantment daily.
The Dome, Jeffery Smart, 1979.
And, if, like Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Maira Kalman, and many other intensely creative people, we braid our days with moments of sensory delight and poetic memories, we will kindle our inspiration, imagination and creativity.
“Human life and objects and trees vibrate with mysterious meanings, which can be deciphered like cuneiform writing. There exists a meaning, hidden from day to day, but accessible in moments of greatest attentiveness, in those moments when consciousness loves the world.”
Plum Warbler, Tsuchiya Koitsu, 1870-1949.
So let's walk through the world with our senses open and alive to the abundant beauty and enchantment ever flowing around us.
We will encounter poetic moments of sensory delight that kindle our inspiration, imagination and creativity.
And our artwork will help bring beauty and enchantment into the world, enriching ourselves and our audience.
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