Stories have always inspired me. Perhaps because I was raised with them, in one art form or another…
When I was a young girl, our family often took Sunday drives through the country-side, with the hoped-for goal of buying ice cream cones. A favorite trip was to a small college town twenty miles due west of us, up and over hills that put my tummy in a spin, as if riding a roller coaster. Our dad took the hills just fast enough to get my sisters and me giggling.
When the hills leveled out, he’d sing or simply recite ballads in a voice rich and deep. Sometimes his sung-stories made me laugh, sometimes cry, but they were all so beautifully told that I asked for them over and over again.
Today, whenever I open a book from his library, I hear his voice, and the drama again comes alive.
My dad didn’t stop with ballads. Whether teaching history or literature, or giving one of his popular radio talks or after dinner speeches, even as he coached his football teams, he always made his points with stories.
Tell a story, he’d say. Make it move and pop with action. Let people see a movie-show in their heads and they’ll stay with you. Let them relate to the hero, and they’ll come back!
He taught me life is theater, and theater’s drama an inspiring metaphor for truth. Learn from it and live it.
There’s a new blog on the block called the ThreeDogStudio. I read the About Me page, and combined with the art work I found in her most recent posts, I knew I would come back for the inspirational stories there. She tells those stories through photography, collage, watercolors, digital pigments… whatever best suits the day.
We live in a world filled with art. People walking or running through their lives, in action and response — a story at every turn. I am constantly awed by the creation of things — both large and minute.
Artists of all types grab tiny pieces of life and write lyrics or tunes, pick up their pens or paint brushes or scissors and paste, and they tell those stories. Often the most complex is told simply…
…as in this simple close-crop watercolor of a iris. 
I painted this for WetCanvas Weekend Drawing Event, week of January 30, 2009.
All of my paintings have been inspired by something — a photo; a challenge; a walk in the quiet morning as the sun peeks through the pinks and lavendars or climbs above a covering of clouds; a child playing; a mom taking a coffee moment alone — something.
Bean Fairbanks, my blogging mentor at LVSonline.com, invited me to post to her Blog Carnival on Inspiration. I’ve entered the post Kali at the Beach.
And I invite you to the Carnival on Inspiration… some of my best blogging buddies will be there, and I think you’ll enjoy it.
Now, time for your own coffee break. I’m brewing my favorite, French Roast. It’s fresh; it’s piping hot. And there’s sugar and cream on the sideboard. Oh yes, my granddaughter brought home a coffee cake from Panera to share. Help yourself.
And while you’re at it: What inspires you? And what does it inspire you to do???
{ 1 trackback }
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for your comment on my blog, (the portrait on the chart). I see your wetcanvas project here, it looks nice, I like your color choice. What inspires? Memory, especially a love of something. It’s always easy to paint something you love. Having an emotional connection helps me. There is way more inspiration than there is time to paint it!
Ahhh yes. Memory. Natalie Goldberg writes that a favorite creative prompt she uses is “I remember……..”
I often use it when writing in my journal.
I agree — not enough time to paint it all. And don’t you find that, as you paint more, there is more you think of to paint? I do.
Thanks for coming by, Annie… I very much enjoyed your blog and will go again. I encourage others here to click on your name and take a look at your portrait-on-a-chart.
Have I told you lately I love reading your words? I love the way you are always into learning something new, some new way of painting, of looking at things. And I love the warm whiff of wisdom in the air, like the aroma of coffee. Thanks for the brew! I have no cake to offer, but perhaps banana chips will do?
You were lucky to have a father like that.
Your iris is beautiful. I love looking at all the beautiful creations people make.
Anita
Hi Swati – I loved reading your comment. Sometimes just the way words are written is an art form all by itself. Such are yours, here.
We have enough coffee cake to go around… it’s one of those bottomless thingies.
And I love fruit, so I’m whuffing down the banana chips. Thanks!
I know how blessed I was with my parents, Anita. I don’t take that for granted.
I think that’s why I’m so tender about those who weren’t so blessed — or aren’t.
I stayed up late last night watching (for the umpteenth time) Good Will Hunting.
It never fails to sock me in my center, and I pray that those who need them will know their own angels in life. Will have such a mentor…
And I admire beyond measure those who rise above their circumstances, whether they have to for survival or are determined to by will. They inspire me.
Oh, and thank you much for liking my iris. I love to paint… and flowers and trees are a bugaboo. I have to practice to learn…..
WOW! that iris inspired me – the foliage was so beautiful and the greens were so right on and so complimentary with the purples in the iris.
Have you always had this site? Because I’ve come here before and could never find anything but your cute little coffee cup! So I’ll be back!!
Thanks for all the nice comments on my blog – they really were uplifting this morning!
Thanks!
I’ve had the blog since last June. Are you coming in from a browser different from Explorer or Firefox? I don’t understand why only the coffee cup would show. Hm….
Anyway, thanks for coming back.
And you’re welcome for my comments to you — I love your site and your paintings and sketches. You also give me thought points. I have it as a link here in my blog roll.
Oh, you’ve made my own memories of our precious Daddy come back alive…..thank you! You described him to a “T”…..was there ever anyone else like him? He was…and still is…..such a blessing.
Yes, we are indeed surrounded by art…..in my last year of my 60’s, perhaps I see things much more clearly now…..the beauty of the inside of my magnificently made piano; the innocence of the baby of a stranger at the mall who caught my eyes and gave me that slow, adorable smile that I still carry with me; the ethereal beauty of ice hanging from plants still wearing their brilliant blooms, unaccustomed to such a freeze; colors in the sunrises and sunsets that cannot be humanly duplicated…………
Oh wow — that’s beautiful, sister dear. You appreciate the smallest things, the subtleties that could be so easily missed if you were in a hurry. I remember reading once — I think it was in a Norman Vincent Peale book — that every now and then you should put your ear to the ground. Not just to hear the quiet earth, but to see from a different perspective, to get down to your own grounding…
Thank you so much for commenting — for adding a rich piece to this conversation.
Note: Nita Mata’s paintings can be found in her PBase galleries, here:
Barb, as I’m sure you know, today would have been our dad’s 98th birthday, chronologically only, because we remember him as he was when he was physically with us….always young!
Nita, I’ve thought about him on and off all day, and yes, I knew he’d be 98.
Yea-go!
We miss you, Tiger… (That was his nick name from his high school football days, and that’s what we called him in public after we grew up. But at home he was always Daddy.)
Thanks Barb for your message on my blog . it’s nice to find others who like “the Shack ” You blog is very pleasant and i love your Iris.
I love Swati’s words, “the warm whiff of wisdom, like the aroma of coffee…” That really describes your site and why I love coming here. Inspiring – I certainly find it that! Your father sounds a wonderful man, and of course he was responsible for two wonderful daughters.
Stories! At one time I took a course in a school of psychology founded by Robert Langs, and it was based on the stories we tell and the messages we send in them. Tell a story, he said, and your listener is hooked. So true!
Thank you, Barb, for this post. The way you’ve written it gives me lots of ideas for my own blog. I am more than ready to venture beyond my own words and mention those who have inspired me, as you did here.
Thanks for that, and thank you so much for the lovely mention of my blog. I recognize that my blog has reformed my days in many ways, making me much more aware of things to share, things that inspire. Karol
Barb,
Your writing and art are truly an inspiration.
It inspires me to look for what I can do well. Still looking.
Carol
Lovely post!! It’s interesting the childhoold things that stick with us and inspire us as adults. When I was little my grandmother used to tell me stories of her childhood in Russia. They still bring up vivid pictures in my mind. Your iris is beautiful – you seem to have control of that hard medium.