Travelling and it's Power to Transform and Inspire
Travelling and it’s Power to Transform and Inspire
About 14 years ago my best friend was travelling the world and was going to be making a short stopover in the Philippines to meet some family on her way down to Australia. I was 26 years old and the only travelling I had really done was to places like Mexico and Las Vegas and destinations in the US and Canada; places that were safe and lacking in real culture experiences.
I was going through a moment in life where I started to question things and asking myself what I wanted out of life. I think we all go through this stage (if not many times in our lives) but I will never forget the moment I decided to message my friend and tell (I didn’t ask) her that I was going to meet her in the Philippines and that I wanted to stay for a month. Her initial plan was just to stay for a week or so, meet some family and make her way to Australia where she thought her real adventure was. She totally jumped on board and I booked my ticket the next day and the planning for what would be the most influential trip of my life thus far began.
What I didn’t know at the time was that this trip would be the catalyst for my love and obsession with exploration and adventure. While in the Philippines, I discovered the power that different cultures, thoughts, ideas and ways of doing things had on me. I started to understand what patience was, I started to realize that there was so much more going on other than my little life back in Vancouver and I started to understand that I had so much to learn from the world. I knew I didn’t know everything and that I had a lot to figure out, I just never understood that the world could be such an incredible classroom.
Fast forward 14 years later, I have been to all the continents except for Antarctica (but my husband and I are already planning that adventure), 21 countries and I do not see an end to my travelling in sight.
Aside from the life lessons that travelling has and continues to teach me, one of the coolest things about going on these adventures around the world is the inspiration I get for my paintings and artistic expression.
The images above are from the Lantau to Big Buddha hike my husband and I did while in Hong Kong (We travelled to China in 2017 and visited Beijing, Shanghai, Macao and Hong Kong). (A word of advice, if you plan on doing this hike, please know that it has two summits and you need to prepare. It’s over 8 hours and you need to bring enough water and food so you don’t die/look like my hubby above!!)
The misty clouds that were below us and the teal green landscape and water definitely influenced me when I painted the above painting titled RENTS
Every time I go away, I am always looking around for things to inspire me. Whether it’s an obvious landscape with beautiful sunsets or mountain ranges or the texture in a cloth or the color of a cocktail, the opportunity to be inspired is always around us. All you have to do is keep your eyes and heart open to it.
What I have also realized is that you don’t need to jump on a plane to get inspired. We live in one of the most beautiful and awe inspiring places in the world and I get so much inspiration from just doing hikes in our own back yard!! The painting above was created because of the colors and textures I saw when my husband and I hiked the Saint Marks Summit in North Vancouver. It was a gloomy, rainy day and the view at the summit was completely fogged in, but I couldn’t help but notice the pops of green and the beauty in the reflections of the puddles. I came home and immediately started planning out this piece in the above image.
Inspiration for my artwork can come from any where! I travelled to the Okanagan for my bachelorette party last August and when I got home from this epic adventure, I was going through all the incredible photos I had taken and this one below caught my eye. There was something about the beauty of all my favorite ladies and how they all looked in their floral dresses. I loved all the color combinations and the texture that each of the fabrics gave off. I got the idea to combine those colors and textures with the composition of a more literal scene that I had seen so many times on my drives through BC and up to the Okanagan and the piece below was created.
My honeymoon to Tanzania last year in October was probably my most memorable trip I have had to date. Africa has always had a special place in my heart and I always knew that I had to get there. When my hubby and I were first dating he mentioned that if he ever got married, his dream would be to go on a African Safari for his honeymoon. Literally in that moment, I knew he was the man of my dreams. I had always had this thought on my bucket list and I finally found my partner in crime to explore the world with. Three years later we were married and our month long adventure to Tanzania and to the top of the highest freestanding mountain in the world (Mount Kilimanjaro) began.
I never expected the influence that this trip would have on my artwork. I have never seen color combinations like this before. The sunsets that happen at the equator and at 20,000 feet are things that every human should experience and see. The energy and kindness from the locals was another thing we were blown away by and that definitely came across in my artwork when I returned.
I was preparing for my 2019 solo art exhibition when I returned from my honeymoon and what I found most interesting was the color choices I was choosing for each of the upcoming artworks. I normally paint in the more neutral tones with blues but color was just oozing out of me when I created this show. And I certainly had Tanzania to thank for that.
When we travelled to Iceland in 2017, I had the feeling of being home. When I am surrounded by mountains, glaciers and waterfalls, I am my most true self. For two weeks, my husband and I travelled the treacherous Ring Road around the whole country and captured and experienced some of the world’s most beautiful wonders.
We summited the two newest mountains in the world, (Magdi and Modi), I had a facial/shower under a waterfall every morning and kept fit by doing planks on broken off pieces of glacier on Diamond Beach. (See pictures below)
And some of my favourite artwork of all time came from the inspiration I got from this trip. Every time I turned there was something new and wondrous to look at; The shape of the mountains, the texture/cracks of the land around the geysers, the sparkle from the thousands of broken glaciers, the vastness of the hardened lava fields………. I could seriously list a million more things that blew my mind!
So here is the moral of the story…….. TRAVEL TRAVEL TRAVEL!!!!! It is life changing. It doesn’t matter if you are not an artist, inspiration can affect so many more things than just artwork. And like I said before, it doesn’t have to cost thousands of dollars and you don’t have to travel across the world, just start local and see how your surroundings can truly affect you. Be open to all the subtle things that are around you and watch how your energy can change and how much you can learn.
