I went to New Mexico a couple of weeks ago. The light is different in New Mexico. It's bright and dry and very hot and feels like it will burn all the bad living out of me. All the alcohol and bad food and evil thoughts just melted away. The light strikes the ground at an odd angle that makes the shadows longer than usual. The light in Austin, where I live, is flatter, wet and heavy and feels a bit moldy and sticky. Does the environment affect the act of creating? I believe so. A couple of years ago I spent a few weeks in Florence, Italy working in an amazing printmaking workshop. It was a shop that Picasso had done some work in - there were artists proofs of his on the walls. I was inspired and amazed at how different the art I created was compared to the work I do in Austin. The experience was, how do I put it, magical. When I got home I tried to create the same sort of work, I have a small press at the house, but it was impossible. All the work came out with an "Austin" feel. I would love to work in Berlin for a while to see what I come up with.
Anyone else have the experience of your work being affected by place?
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I definitely agree about environments affecting the output of a creative process. Art-making, like life, does not occur in a vacuum. Our environment and the culture surrounding us has a lot of influence on our state of being, which inevitably will influence our work.
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