Cultivating Inspiration
Think of the creative mind as a garden. Inspiration rises like a flower from well cultivated and fertile soil. To cultivate is to nurture and help grow. When you cultivate something, you work to enrich it. In a garden this might include amending soil with compost: grass clippings, leaves, yard and tree trimmings, food scraps, crop residues, animal manure, biosolids, eggshells, and teabags.
You could say that all of the things that we study or read and all of the seemingly worthless, toilsome, drudgerous things we do in our studios amounts to compost for our garden. This cultivation is what gives context to inspiration.
“I work like a gardener… Things come slowly… Things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. I must graft. I must water… Ripening goes on in my mind. So I’m always working at a great many things at the same time.” Joan Miro
In the creative life nothing is ever wasted. Artists draw nourishment from everything around them. But like Miro says; things come slowly, follow their natural course, must ripen but one has to always be tending to one’s garden, watching it, spending time in it, pulling weeds, getting one’s hands dirty and put in the ‘sweat equity’.
Using this metaphor there is also the recognition of the changing of the seasons and understanding when what will grow and when it won’t. This is where patient, purposeful persistence come in as mentioned in the article Sticktoitiveness
The anticipation and pursuit of inspiration can get us excited but can also frustrate us in the beginning. We have to study our own rhythm and the ebb and flow of inspiration and patiently prepare ourselves to not only receive it but be ready to capture and make use of it. It will often come in little snatches like catching butterflies in a net. However, we must first build this net. Our well used tools and studios and workspaces are that net. Our daily practice, our ongoing preparations, our self-discipline, our intention and constancy is the foundation that allows inspiration to appear seemingly by magic out of nowhere. But it is not out of nowhere, it is blooming out of the garden of our mind.
While I can't relate to the garden metaphor (I don't have a green thumb and have "decorated my backyard with mannequin bodyparts, and other odds and ends of junk not used in the studio), I can understand it from an objective point of view. It's a good metaphor and I can't immediately think of another that I can relate to unless I compare the process a bit to child-rearing. I often think of my art pieces as my children or babies. As my kids are adults now, I like how they turned out with my nurturing as well as how their own timing and will had made them into humans I really love. Sometimes my art over time will also seemingly change meaning and even look differently to my eyes. As for my garden..........I pay professionals to deal with it and they mow around the specific art-junk out there. My yard is also a graveyard for the many dead birds, cats, possums that are respectfully buried there over the 2 decades I've been here. As for past art pieces no longer working for me, they don't get buried but taken apart and repurposed for new pieces.