‘Inspiration Close To Home’ is the fourth in a series of blogs looking at my personal lessons from lockdown. Previous blogs have looked at:
Inspiration Close To Home
Having To Stay At Home
Italy’s lockdown began on 9 March and lasted two months, one week and two days. We had to stay at the house for the vast majority of that time. As an artist specializing in photo art there is an important ingredient needed – photographs! So to have to stay at home had something of an impact on my activities.
Yes I also paint in acrylics and create digital art, but my main focus is working on what I download from my camera.
I Felt A Bit Lost Initially
To start with I was lost without being able to go on a photo shoot. Normally, I would have gone to various towns and villages on my visits to the UK and have photos to process. Coupled with low sales (forget local sales – no tourists!) it was a strange time indeed. Luckily my art sales supplement my pension income, so I am not totally reliant on them.
Inspiration Visiting The UK
When taking my Mum out and about in the UK, we sometimes plan a day trip somewhere with the double aim of having fun and photographing somewhere I have not been before. We had a fabulous day out in Arundel in West Sussex last year, for example. My Mum is a great photo spotter and while I am taking shots she is lining up my next ones!
As well as trips out in the UK, my Mum’s garden in England is a joy, a floral paradise and I take endless photographs of the flowers to work on when I get back home to Italy.
Recently I hung a hanging on my pergola that is based on a photograph of some pretty lilac primulas in Mum’s garden.
Inspiration At Home in Italy
When at home in Italy, I will often take myself off to a local village or town to take photos. I have written various blogs about individual towns and villages in the immediate area of Umbria and Tuscany near me, for example, Pienza.
Even meeting a friend for a coffee can be an opportunity for a photograph. Like the time I found a red Italian scooter motorcycle parked against a red brick wall. Or the time I stumbled across a wonderful view of a church down an alley.
Just going on a dog walk near the house I will often see something to photograph and work on. Like the time the dogs and I turned a corner and were greeted with sun rays coming down through the trees.
Inspiration Near The House
After the first few weeks of lockdown I was ready for inspiration close to home. I had gone through my back catalog of images and brought things up to date. I had found some old photographs that I had left myself to work on and got those completed.
Gradually spring was arriving on the mountainside and that got the creative juices flowing. Beautiful red poppies, wild flowers, animals and birds. And I was amazed at what I found when I treated the area around my house like I would a photo shoot. Wild flowers, old olive trees, countryside vistas and more. All within view of my front door!
I got inspired and started a new series of olive tree images. There are only around 10,000 immediately around us so it won’t take long to do them all…
The next blog in this series looks at household waste management.
Before you go
My name is Dorothy Berry-Lound an artist and writer. You can find out more about my art and writing at https://dorothyberryloundart.com.
You can follow me on Facebook.
Thank you for reading!
What a neat insight to your everyday life – love those olive trees.
Yes those trees are certainly inspirational!