Friday 30th December 2017
Creative Influences in Detail
What has become obvious to me is that most of the creative influence is from my early years before I began to experience depression and isolation from the world. It strikes me that perhaps medication has been getting in the way of “feeling” influence from creative sources around me.
Music
Constant in my life – Radio 2 is generally on wherever I am I. I’d quite happily go without a TV but would be totally lost without my radio. If not radio 2, Classic FM.
Eclectic Taste in Music, very much an 80’s chick; Reggae, Ska, Good Tunes, Great Lyrics.
Bowie
Queen; definitely my mums influence here.
Rolling Stones, I saw the Urban Jungle tour at Manchester in 1990. Very inspired by the music and the atmosphere at was was purported to be their last ever tour…Ha!
Madness, Our House; Mad on Madness as a Teenager.
Eddie Grant, Electric Avenue….
10cc – Dreadlock Holiday
Boney M, Rasputin – good tune – good story…
As time went on my musical influences became very dark; listening to ballads just seemed to feed my depression. Stopped listening to music (except for the radio) completely for about 10 years.
Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb
David Gates & Bread; Make it with You
Robbie Williams
Scotland
Runrig, I was at this concert in Balloch Park
Flower of Scotland
Edinburgh Tatttoo
Classical
Affected deeply by music and lyrics and have to be AWARE of the effects certain tracks have on me.
Edvard Greig- Peer Gynt
Claude Debussy: Clair De Lune
Paganini; The Devils Violinist
Andre Rieu; most heart warming concert ever attended.
Books
Inability to comprehend text after a severe bout of depression. Now realise this is because my learning style is Auditory and not Visual. Nowadays mainly Reference Books to be honest.
Needless to say I don’t remember reading any of the top 50 books on this website. http://thegreatestbooks.org/ 😦
Film
Again I have difficulty retaining information and find films instantly forgettable, never remembering character names. Its like my sub-conscious discards things that are not valid or I dont “feel” a connection with.
My favourite film would have to be Dr Zhivago.
Again the story of personal struggle and the emotive music has made this a long standing favourite film of mine.
Gone with the Wind
Les Miserables, the Movie an obvious choice.
Rogers and Hammerstein
Carousal
The King and I
Calamity Jane
Mary Poppins
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Theatre
There are many theatre productions that I enjoy, but only a few that I feel a real connection with. Hearing the music live in a theatre is the most wonderful feeling for me to experience.
Les Miserables, my all time favourite piece of theatre, reduces me to tears every time, the music and the story just really pulls at my empathic feelings I have towards people in difficulty.
Phantom of the Opera; the music and again the story really pull at my heart strings.
Blood Brothers, not only is it the music that I feel a strong connection with, but the story too, again people in poverty going through difficult times.
Artists
Early Influence
The piece The Scream by Edvard Munch haunted me throughout my early years, why I still dont know, however looking at this piece along with the piece, Anxiety now, reflects the sense of being overwhelmed that I am plagued by, even to this day.
Perhaps my sub-conscious felt a connection with this piece and this is why it became such an important piece to me.
I just love any work by Picasso, I think they reflect the contrasting way that I see the world.
My interest in Georges Braques began when I visited the Tate Gallery with Denbigh College in 2015. This was my first experinece of George Braques.
I think the distorted way that he presents his work reflects the lack of connection that I feel with the outside world in general.
Recent Influences
Although not directly affected, I really feel an empathy for the issues that Ai Wei Wei addresses.
I also admire his courage putting himself and his family at risk all for the freedom of speech, which he should be entitled to by rights anyway.
Mark Wallinger
Mark Wallinger is one of Britain’s foremost contemporary artists and has been invited to produce an ambitious new work for the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain. Wallinger’s work engages with questions of personal and national identity, history and belief systems. Typically uncompromising in scale and intention, this major site specific commission explores issues relating to the liberty of the individual and freedom of speech.
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/mark-wallinger-state-britain
I am inspired by the questioning nature of Marks work and the connection to cultural identity and belief systems and see this as a potential way forward for my own artwork.
Marcus Coates
Often laughed at, his belief in the otherworldly journeys he completes transcends the social awkwardness around his practice and offers his audience the opportunity to gain insight and guidance for their current social or economic issues.
Shamanic Practice, although ancient does have a place in the modern world. We are all so pre-occupied with our day to day lives, yet more and more people need insight and guidance and turn to spirituality to find those answers.
The combination of spirituality and art is a comfortable place for me to be.
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys was very controversial as an artist and this controversy exists to this day, with suggestions that events the “lead him to the art that he created” did not happen at all and the person we believe is Joseph Beuys is simply an Alter Ego, a separate persona created by Beuys.
Why does he inspire me? – The Controversy and the Issues that he addresses, the personal experience and the global political or social issues. The ability he has to just put himself out there, no matter what people think.
From roughly the 1950s through the early 1980s, Beuys demonstrated how art might originate in personal experience yet also address universal artistic, political, and/or social ideas (i.e. topical issues of the day). This is part of the meaning to be gleaned from his 1965 solo performance, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, in which materials of personal significance (one foot wrapped in felt, the cradling of a recently deceased animal) poetically suggest the healing potential of art for a humanity seeking self revitalization and a sense of renewed hope in the future (one should recall that Beuys came of age in the immediate postwar period, when many Germans were just coming to terms with many traumatic aspects of their recent past).
She's a Fine Artist 