Inspiration
Top 10 influences of 2024
To finish off the year, it is with immense gratitude that I am sharing my top 10 art inspirations for 2024. Reflecting people from a range of notoriety and within and outside my inner circle, some of whom I’ve mentioned here in previous posts - they influenced the direction of my work, motivated me to create my most thoughtful pieces, and inspired me to stay true to my vision even on days full of crippling doubt. I hope understanding the origins of what I create and where I’m going with my art will inspire you to look at your sphere of influence and reflect on what they mean to you.
Top 10 Art Inspirations of 2024
Georgia O’Keeffe’s “My New Yorks”
Like many other artists and collectors, I’ve been a fan of Georgia O’Keeffe for many years, as she is a woman who dared to follow her own path both personally and artistically. Celebrated for her provocative floral art influenced by her time immersed in the Southwest, she seems like an obvious choice to inspire my organic, nature-themed work. This year, however, I was introduced to her cityscapes on a recent trip to Chicago. A special exhibit dedicated to her work titled “My New Yorks” was on display at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Here, I found a particular irreverence for convention combined with bold visions of what otherwise might be an unremarkable view to anyone else. Seeing her work invigorates me to keep pressing forward with my art in new and unexpected ways.
Kirstie Macleod & The Red Dress Project
The Red Dress Project is a global collaborative embroidery project envisioned by Kirstie Macleod. It is a beautiful testament to the strength and courage of women and their ability to tell their stories with stitches and cloth. The dress created for this project is 14 years in the making, has traveled to 51 countries, and included 380 artisans in its making. Extroidary for its vision, execution, and mission to provide a platform for women’s voices; it is truly inspiring to me and was part of the impetus for my installation, “Of the Mind,” and performance work I started over the summer, which included a very simple dress form made from pages of a vintage book, vintage slip, and then augmented with a papier-mâché deer head.
The film and dress part of my installation reflected a personal struggle with timelines, what we will do to hold onto each other, and how we hold each other apart. It was a collision of memories and fantasy and future. I hope to continue exploring these ideas and the dress form (as well as human hybrid states) as I develop new work and installation ideas. The Red Dress Project also inspired a desire for some skill-building in 2025 - one such skill being embroidery (find the complete list at the end). I hope to spend a few moments each morning practicing stitches to “glow up” an old sweater (ala BONUS textile artist Karen Turner’s 2024 “intuitive daily stitching.”)
TL:DR Inspiration List with Links
Georgia O’Keeffe’s “My New Yorks”
Kirstie Macleod & The Red Dress Project
Inspiration Side Note - NaNoWriMo
Diane Culhane
I have long admired the art of Diane Culhane, a Seattle artist I first met in my early art festival days, often as a part of the “Best of the Northwest” shows organized by the Northwest Art Alliance. Her unique work has a freedom that is hard to find, combined with beautiful narrative elements that draw you closer and make even her largest work feel very intimate. She is also a fantastic teacher (or so everyone I know who has been to her workshop has told me). She even created a book based on her painting style, If You Can Doodle You Can Paint.
Though our paths no longer cross as often, I hope I will have more opportunities to visit Seattle just for fun in 2025, and I can plan to attend one of her open studio sales or even sign up for a workshop!
Willem Volkersz
I remarked on Willem Volkersz in another of my Artist's Notes.
Nine months later, I continue to feel the impact of his work. I am starting to see how it directly influences my artistic choices as I walk through antique stores and estate sales, looking for tiny ceramic creatures to add to my new fascination with dioramas.
Lee Emma Running & Daniela Naomi Molnar
I was introduced to these two artists through The Arts Center of Corvallis. Their show, “Transformation / Reclamation,” was intriguing, but the artist talks they both gave drew me closer to their work and their inspirations.
Nebraska artist Lee Emma Running looks to roadsides as sites of wild beauty and violent accidents. For this exhibition, she repairs the bones of roadkill with glass and gold, and transforms exploded tires into elegant cast iron dinnerware.
Oregon artist and poet Daniela Naomi Molnar embraces and transforms human and other-than-human intergenerational memory by foraging for pigments in socio-ecological sacrifice zones such as former concentration camps, previously glaciated spots, and abandoned villages.
Listen to The Art of Reconnection a new podcast series produced by the Spring Creek Project, and discover more about the artists of Transformation / Reclamation.
~ https://theartscenter.net/transformation-reclamation-molnar-running/
Running told a fascinating story about “The Verge” and how she connects to it and the life and death of its inhabitants. (I also learned new meanings of this word.)
verge
verb
be very close or similar to.
noun
an edge or border.
a grass edging such as that by the side of a road or path.
an edge of tiles projecting over a gable.
an extreme limit beyond which something specified will happen.
Running (and Molnar) personify the artist who embraces who they are and sees life (and death) as the art itself.
Beyond the more esoteric inspiration they both provided, after attending Molnar’s poetry reading and purchasing her award-winning book…
…I was further inspired to continue my pursuits in writing (adding another daily skill-building habit I’d like to lean into for 2025). She spoke of starting each day with writing first before spending time in her studio. I’m an early riser. But for too long now, I’ve spent my cozy first cup of coffee moments on the couch catching up with the world online via phone scrolling. (Now, that’s a habit we probably all agree could be replaced with something more meaningful/practical). Hearing Molnar read her poetry and talk about her writing process in conjunction with her art practice was the wake-up call and inspiration I needed.
Inspiration Side Note - NaNoWriMo
While Molnar’s work has encouraged me to develop a daily poem practice for 2025, a different challenge helped me reignite a childhood passion for creative writing—the National Novel Writing Month of November challenge, lovingly called NaNoWriMo.
Thanks to my fellow family competitors, I was encouraged to write 48,000 words in my first attempt at writing fiction. (The other two both reached the challenge goal of 50,000! Congrats, Scott and Carson!) I now have the basis for a book, and I hope to spend 2025 augmenting and editing it. I couldn’t be more excited about this story, the characters I’ve come to know through the process, and where it will challenge me to take my art in 2025 (no hints yet!)
Isabella Ducrot
Something is spectacular yet sobering about seeing an artist pick up a brush later in life (in Ducrot’s case, in her fifties) and create work for 40 years before suddenly reaching international fame in her nineties. It tells me two things. Make art (regardless of age), and fame isn’t everything. Beyond the initial headline that drew me to her work, however, I found her sensibility with paint, reverence for textiles, and, much like Molnar, her commitment to writing comforting and beautiful, and I had to read more.
Ducrot’s work shows a particular interest in ordinary woven materials—the kind, she has written, that are “used to protect, wrap, wash and rub the bodies of new-born babies, of women giving birth, of the elderly, of the sick.” Her inclusion of such fabrics in her art rejects the low esteem in which they are typically held, revealing their inherent dignity. Similarly, in “Women’s Life,” she writes of finally considering “the endemic ignorance that had tormented me for so many years not as a source of shame but instead as an advantage.” That shame had made it difficult for Ducrot to take herself seriously, not just as an artist but as a person. For too long, she looked to others to tell her who she was. “I think life, for women, begins at sixty,” she told me. “Because then we begin to be free.”
~ An Artist Flowering in Her Nineties, by Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker
And so, this soon-to-be 56-year-old is eyeing 60 with a new sense of freedom (and silly fun!)
Andrea Burgay
I am fascinated by the deconstructive collage work of Andrea Burgay. Thanks to a year focused on making little collages, I have found a whole new range of artists who inspire me to keep pushing the boundaries of how I make and think about collage art and art in general.
You can also follow Burgay’s Instagram (which is where I found her during one of those morning scroll-fests. OK, so not all scrolling is a waste of time!)
Hilda Muyskens
If you follow my art, you may have noticed this woman showing up in the vintage photos I use with my collages and digitally altered images.
This is my English grandmother, Hilda Muyskens, (1902 - 1998), pictured below with my grandfather, Henry F. Muyskens (1897 - 1986).
When my brother and I decided in 2022 to move our mom into assisted living, I spent most of 2023 cleaning out her house of more than 50 years of possessions - including boxes and boxes of photographs. I had incredibly fond memories of my grandmother, who was a quiet and gentle person who loved her family. Seeing so many pictures of her from when she was young stayed with me and heavily influenced my art in 2024. I am so grateful for the new connection it gave me to family - those currently surrounding me and those who have long passed - and for a new understanding of my heritage. As I continue to unbox what I was too emotionally drained to deal with in 2023, I may take more cues from the past as I move my art forward, but I’ll let it all unfold as it will.
Contemporary Fiber Arts Guild & Vistas and Vineyards
Finally - I want to take a moment to recognize two artist communities - one I have enjoyed getting to know this year and one I joined in years past and continue to follow, enjoy, and join when I can.
This painting, Bewitched by the Sea, was a culmination of the experiences I have had with both these outstanding organizations: The Contemporary Fiber Arts Guild (follow the link to see photos from our Holiday make-and-take gathering) and Vistas and Vineyards (“the oldest continuous Plein Air painting group in the state of Oregon”).
Approaching fiber arts from a painter’s background, I was nervous about joining a fiber arts guild. This group has taught me so much about how people create and how far and wide fiber arts can reach. In monthly meetings, a guest speaker presents a topic, and then we have time to share our projects - whatever they may be. I first approached this group looking to find support for my quilt project, “Threadbare”, which I displayed as part of this installation, “Of the Mind” at the Arts Center of Corvallis in August 2024. (I’ll also be the presenter, talking about the making of “Threadbare” for the February guild meeting.)
It was this patchwork of design that I then took to my painting, which I had first created as a part of a Vistas and Vineyards outing in Newport, Oregon, in 2023.
While I didn’t have a chance to join the V&V group on their weekly outings in 2024, I look forward to trying again in 2025. It’s a supportive group that accepts artists of all levels and experiences. Painting “en plein air” (in the open air) is exciting and rewarding, even if the art doesn’t go according to plan. Sometimes, it waits in the back of the studio for a new idea to take it in a new direction - as with “Bewitched by the Sea” (currently up for auction on DailyPaintWorks.com - my new home for all things painting!)
And with that, I hope you enjoyed my very long-winded Top 10 inspirations from 2024! I hope to take more time to share studio thoughts throughout 2025, but if I disappear here and there, I’m probably just diving deeper into a skillset or art piece that needs my attention. Thank you for understanding, and I hope you have a chance to do the same!
Wishing you a very happy New Year! ,
Jennifer
2025 - the year of skill-building
Pen & Ink Drawing
I’ll be working from the book Pen and Ink Drawing A Simple Guide by Alphonso Dunn to practice slowing down my mark-making and make it more intentional. (My Bookshop.org affiliate link.)
Embroidery
I’ll be practicing my embroidery skills and adding to my stitch collection with the help of The Embroidery Stitch Bible by Betty Barnden. (My Bookshop.org affiliate link.)
Writing
I’m restructuring my studio days to include writing in the morning as I hope to finish my novel.
Digital Tools
I’ll be working from the book The Complete Guide to Procreate by 21 Solutions AB to help me accomplish a new super-secret project that may take a couple of years to unveil!