What inspires my art

It may come off as an unexpected way of starting an artist blog post, but truth be told, art mostly helps me stay sane as a mother.  This is one of the many reasons I brought it back into my life after letting it fall by the wayside for more than a decade.  It helps me to remember who I was before I became a mother.  While I started creating professional art in 2016, now it is more relevant than ever, as I try to juggle working from home and homeschooling my super energetic 5 year old daughter (thankfully the 10 year old is quite independent).  After finally getting the kids into bed at night, art gives me alone time when I can unwind and be myself again.    

The vast majority of my art is based on microscopy. While I enjoy recreating these images in 3D and like the concept of turning microscopy on its head, I believe that I chose the subject a bit haphazardly. Science was almost the first thing that I could think of after choosing my medium – beads. I remembered learning to bead as a kid and felt very nostalgic. Backwards logic I guess – choosing method over subject. Jewelry didn’t seem large and substantial enough, and beaded flowers that I started out with in my teenage years are too commonplace. I needed something more original.

As a child, I would always get excited about finding a new technique of creating art – be it painting, sculpting clay or lace-making.  Figuring out exactly what to create was an afterthought.  I was more interested in mastering the method.  As I keep saying even now – “I am a process person”.

This is exactly what I thought 3 years ago, when I needed to find a new job as a scientist.  I felt like I didn’t have enough ideas to do original research and would therefore be a great match for working at a CRO (Contract Research Organization that performs jobs for other researchers).  That’s where I could “work with my hands,” as I keep saying in so many intro conversations.  I interviewed at a few places like that, but ended up not getting in, perhaps for the better, as they were outside the city.  At the time, I was warned about how disheartening it may feel to complete somebody else’s projects and send them off without having a say in what happens next…  And then I ended up coming to my current job, which is a slightly fancier version of a CRO in an academic setting.

Here, I work with my hands alright. Day in and day out (pre-COVID-19 at least).  But my mind and my heart are somewhere else.  I just cannot make myself feel invested in other people’s work.  And that brings me back to art, which now became more important to me than ever.  Between performing other people’s projects and motherhood, art feels like the only thing that is under my personal control.  These are my ideas, my decisions and my projects.  Even though I am interested in making commissions, my art comes from me and me alone.

Does this qualify as a source of inspiration?

“The Void”, 2018