What Inspires Me: Other Artists

“White Center,” Mark Rothko

I remember the first time I stood in front of a Mark Rothko painting in person.

I had seen his work countless times—in books, postcards, photographs—but nothing prepared me for standing before the actual painting. It was enormous, far larger than I had imagined. And suddenly, the image I thought I knew became something entirely different.

The fields of color seemed to breathe. Layers appeared within layers, glowing as though light were coming from somewhere deep inside the painting. What had looked so simple in reproduction revealed depth, movement, and a luminous kind of space that a postcard could never contain.

I stood there looking, and suddenly I found myself in tears.

I think about that experience often because it reminds me of one of the great gifts of being an artist: we are always in conversation with other artists. Some of those conversations happen across centuries. Others happen in museums, studios, books, or around a table with someone who is making something of their own.

“Gartenhaus,” Paul Klee

Some artists have become familiar muses. I am always happy to encounter their work again, like unexpectedly meeting an old friend and discovering that the conversation picks up exactly where it left off.

Other artists are new discoveries. I might walk into an exhibition knowing nothing about the work and leave feeling as though I have met someone who has shifted something in me—opened a window, perhaps, or made me notice a door I hadn't seen before.

And then there are the artists who surround me now.

I feel incredibly fortunate to be part of a living community of artists —to share studios, conversations, ideas, discoveries, doubts, and moments of excitement with people who are also making and searching and trying to understand what wants to emerge.

East Bay Open Studios

There is something special about being around people who understand the uncertainty of making art.

Another artist might look at something I have made and see a possibility I cannot yet see. A question can send me in an unexpected direction. A few words of encouragement can give me permission to try something I might otherwise have dismissed.

That generosity matters.

Making art is an intimate and vulnerable act. We begin with something uncertain—a feeling, an image, a question, a scrap of an idea—and try to give it form. Often we don't know where we are going until we are already on the way.

The artists around me remind me that uncertainty is not something to solve. It is part of the process.

They encourage me to loosen my grip. To experiment. To make a mess. To follow an idea simply because it is interesting. To stay in that space between knowing and not knowing and see what might emerge.

In this way, making art becomes a kind of conversation.

Some of the voices belong to artists who lived long ago. Others belong to the artists sitting beside me now—looking, wondering, experimenting, failing, and beginning again.

All of these voices become part of the landscape in which my own work grows.

Rooftop, Casa Milà, Antoni Gaudi

I am grateful for the artists who came before me. For the artists who walk alongside me.

For the conversations that change the way I see.

And for the reminder that perhaps inspiration is not something we find alone. Perhaps it is something we pass between us—quietly and generously, from one artist to another.