Music inspires me... 
Art by great masters inspires me... 
My husband inspires me... 
My environment inspires me...

For me, inspiration at it's most basic and in the most simple of terms comes from my love of materials, particularly paper and colour combined with texture.

I have a passion for collecting paper, sometimes bordering on obsession. I have collected vintage ephemera for years... stalking paper dealers at flea markets and eBay auctions, collecting ledger books from the 1800's, vintage postcards, vintage pharmacy labels, bookplates, luggage labels and tags. The result is a large area of my art room is now devoted to stacks of photos, postcards, papers and ledger books that get moved and used constantly!

I rarely use copies of vintage material in my artwork, instead preferring the truly time-worn texture of the antique paper. I love the way the ink smudges and how paint and pigments are absorbed by the 100 year old documents. I adore the carefully handwritten pages of a grocer's accounting ledger book, each entry giving me a glimpse into the past; while vintage luggage tags allow me to travel vicariously through people to places I've yet to meet and visit.  It is the vintage, well-loved nature of the ephemera that brings meaning and depth to my artwork... It is the launching pad for my creativity and helps me infuse all my artwork with the unique juxtaposition of antique vintage with contemporary imagery.

Colour and texture are next on my short, but important list of inspiration... don't even get me started about colour! I love it. ALL of it. Bright, vivid, saturated colour stains my fingers on a regular basis... Tubes of brightly hued paints lined baskets in my studio. However, brights do not always rule the roost in my studio, I also love the softer, delicate hues of antique, time worn colour like creams, ecru, antique whites and silvers. I love it all!

Texture is another animal all together and can be seen [and touched] in everything from rough, deeply ridged and pitted textures to smooth, polished and time worn distressed textures. Texture is the stuff that changes the everyday and can make my artwork sing. Texture gives me permission to not only make mistakes, it dares me to try and make a mistake 'work' in the overall design/composition of an art piece.

Over all, everything around me is fodder for inspiration, but my little trifecta of paper, paint and texture always have my back and are what get me started in the studio everyday.