Art Museums: Renewal for the Mind's Eye

When I think about renewal, I think of what I can do to give me energy and creative ideas.  In a perfect world, I would live near the beach and go for long walks and look for seashells and interesting stones.  I did that tirelessly as a child and it was an important part of my development as a person  and artist.   Now that I live quite far from the ocean, I have found other means of renewal.  I go to art museums and look at paintings, mostly paintings since the  1850's.  Living as I do, closer to Canadian cultural centers than ones in the US, I often go to the National Gallery in Ottawa or the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal.  Once you enter these great centers you meet the most wonderful Canadian artists, painters especially.  Would I have ever heard of the Canadian Group of Seven, otherwise ?

                                                     Tom Thompson  Autumn Leaves

 Would I have ever seen paintings by the incredible Mark Aurele Fortin?

And how do I turn renewal into art beads?   I find color combinations I had not thought of before 

and paintings of trees that I feast on with my eyes.

I have found that these renewal experiences began working their way into my art work.

 I began carving tree pendant molds

And most recently I made two new molds from carvings and pressed them into stoneware clay, fired them, stained them, fired them again and tumbled them smooth.

I have always liked the expression, "the eye sees before the mind knows."  It seems that leaves, flowers, plants and trees have become my seashells of renewal in adulthood.