What inspires art?

[caption id="attachment_1506" align="alignnone" width="500" caption=""Tearing Vines" Ann Rea ©, 30"x40", charcoal on canvas, To Kalon Vineyard, Napa Valley"]ToKalon22[/caption] What inspires art?  You know.  Authentic human passion, love, lust, sexual attraction, and all of the self doubt and insecurity that lurks around our minds, fueled by the prospect of rejection. There’s no better channel for this energy than creative expression.  It’s therapy and it is the vital ingredient to great art. The creative realm is a place where the songwriter can take the saddest sentiments and inspiration and transform this into the most beautiful and peaceful lyric and melody. I understand that the Picasso exhibit, currently at the De Young museum of San Francisco, organizes the presentation of each of his artistic periods by his muses.  Makes sense to me. I was with a friend last week and we walked to her favorite dive Pakistani restaurant on Russian Hill.  You can sit there for hours sipping unlimited amounts of Chai.  I was all over it. She’s there so much that the staff knows her. We started chatting with the Pakistani man behind the counter about movies. He told us that Western movies deal with a full range of subjects.  But Bollywood movies are all about; you guessed it, authentic human passion, love, lust, and sexual attraction. Why am I bringing this up?  I’ll admit it, while I was sketching the canvas for “Tearing Vines” as I was carrying on a, let’s just say, an ongoing flirtatious text dialog with a man I’ve known. I texted him the image above,  his replay, “Intense.”  Intense is right.  I’m in San Francisco and he’s, well, elsewhere and unavailable.  That can cause some tension. But I digress.  You don’t need the naughty details.  I’m just making the point that art is born from feelings. And human passion, love, lust, and sexual attraction are amongst the strongest and most intense we can experience. At this point in my life I’m embracing and celebrating this part of my life.  It will make for better art.
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