My TOP 10 Inspirational CREATIVE influences! (Part 1)
Happy July!
Let's talk about PLAY.
I’ve decided to CHOOSE PLAY as my THEME OF CREATIVE EXPLORATION for the SUMMER MONTHS.
It’s occurring to me that ONE OF THE MOST EXPANSIVE WAYS to LIVE is in MEETING + GREETING LIFE in RESPONSE. What does that mean? Well, most of the time, we REACT to life - VIEWING the world through A LENS OF FIXED, RIGID, CONTRACTED + FEARFUL eyes!
REACTING does not ALLOW MAGIC TO HAPPEN. It LIMITS our POSSIBILITIES. Now, I don’t want to life like this, and I’m guessing that you don’t want to either!
RESPONDING, on the other hand, OPENS US UP TO MIRACLES. To WONDER, AWE + OUR OWN GENIUS in delightful PLAY with everything that we experience.
Sounds good hey?!
Are you READY TO PLAY WITH ME?
Throughout July, I thought I’d like to OFFER YOU MY 10 TOP CREATIVE INSPIRATIONAL INFLUENCES! :-). Let’s START WITH Number 1 today! (Sprinkled amongst my musings you will find LINKS TO BOOKS/MOVIES/YOUTUBE and more! Enjoy! X)
Now - I HAVE AN INVITATION TO YOU. If you enjoyed this, then HOW ABOUT LETTING ME KNOW YOUR TOP INSPIRATIONAL CREATIVE INFLUENCES?! You don’t have to do 10 - how about YOUR TOP 3? Are you WILLING TO PLAY WITH ME TOO?
Let’s go!
1) FRIDA KAHLO
Anyone who knows me knows that FRIDA will always be my numero uno in any list I curate of CREATIVE INSPIRATION. I first discovered her whilst at university when I was 19. Not to blow my own AQUARIAN TRUMPET (well, go on then, why change the habit of a lifetime!!! :-D), no one at that time was into her, never mind the absolute consumer and commercialised, even fetishised saturation of Frida images and objects one can find everywhere these days!
It was HER DIARIES that I purchased. Photocopied pages of her original words and drawings, INTIMATE GLIMPSES INTO HER MIND AND HEART with the relevant translation on the opposite page. I was hooked. I fell in love with her – this odd-looking woman with her FIERCE INDEPENDENT and UNIQUE SPIRIT.
PLAYFUL and WICKED both. DEEPLY GIFTED, INQUISITIVE and SENSITIVE. Someone who wasn’t afraid to love deeply, messily, hungrily. BELIEVING IN WHAT WAS TRUTH. Willing to fuck up and be vulnerable, to BLEED ON HER CANVAS, to show her flaws, her scars, and her fallibility as not only a human being, but as a woman too.
Who knows what it is that has captured so many to declare her a part of their DNA – me included. Maybe she’s a reflection of all of us women in who she represented herself to be. The FULL PERMISSSION. The UNAPOLOGETIC LIFE. The loving the ‘wrong’ man. The PAIN of her BODY, her BEAUTY, her WILDNESS. The gaze of perhaps narcissism she was the first to ‘journal’ in this way, the first to take A SELFIE in the form of her many self- portraits. Representing herself in whatever way she wanted to. Maybe she was searching for something intangible in her own unrelenting gaze, like we do when we gaze upon our own reflection or that mirrored back in the eyes of our beholden lovers.
I LOVE HER BECAUSE I KNOW HER. She is me.
She is possibly you too.
(tbc)
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