Inspired to create by…the Vivacious Meredith Heron
I meet the beautiful & vivacious Meredith Heron on twitter a little over a year ago. Have you ever looked back at a time in your life & thought “okay…I guess that was a blessing in disguise?”
Well this was the case with my meeting Meredith. I had been extremely ill for a straight two months (November through December) with what seemed like everything one after the other, viruses, infections then ending in severe bronchitis…possibly walking pneumonia. I was running high fevers & delirious for much of that time & slept a lot. I could not work nor take care of my children who spent much of that time (being that it was their holiday vacation) with their dad.
When I thought was going to go lose my mind from lying around & in between bouts of delirium I would get online & try to accomplish something. The big goal was to learn twitter. I had been on twitter for some time but really had not figured out the ropes. So very different from the facebook I knew so well.
That is where found Meredith Heron. I was following numerous designers all over the world & was watching how they interacted. It was the highlight of my day, soaking up the beauty & creativity of their work & blogs as well as hearing what designing was like on their end of the globe.
I first spotted Meredith when she was to be a guest on twitters #DesignTV weekly Chat. Hosted by Amy Beth Cupp Dragoo & Jonathan Legate. I saw the inviting tweet & opened the link to see the picture of a Stunning Redhead, Meredith Heron who is well-known for being a regularly featured guest/host & design expert on national television programs such as Restaurant Makeover through HGTV Canada.
I was of course intrigued so I looked through her info & decided to follow her. It was less than a week later when I was tweeting with a few folks getting my “wings wet” so to speak (still learning how to tweet back & forth) that she posted something or other about her very young adorable son & motherhood. I, feeling like an expert on the subject for some reason or other (possibly because I have been there done that ) replied to one of her tweets not expecting any kind of acknowledgement & fell off my chair when she replied…
So that is how it began. For those of you who are still twitt-errified of tweeting I am telling you that you are missing out. My world is much more interesting & colorful because I have folks like Meredith who are a part of it now.
Yes, yes! To many this online-social-media-network thing seems impersonal & much like smoke & mirrors & I wont disagree that it can be. There is always good & bad you just have to separate the two & not worry much about what is going on behind the screen. Oh, & also know when to block someone.
Now that you know the background of how I meet Meredith & began passively stalking her (which I’m sure I never would have been if she had not acknowledged me the way she did) you will understand why she is a constant source of inspiration to me.
She is an incredible designer & very real. I love that she speaks her mind & tells it like it is. She has more Moxie than anyone I know, which might be the red hair (I was married to a redhead but he didn’t even have close the kind of fire she possesses). I have only so much time to support & follow others. I do wish there was more of me & my time to spread out…because it is thin at times, but I do my best to support those who I know appreciate it & if I can slip some kind of support to someone who doesn’t really care, I still will.
This I can promise, will not be the first time Meredith is mentioned in this blog. Because of her genius with color (colour for those in the UK) design, & her impeccable good taste she is constantly causing the synapses to jolt in my brain with inspiration.
To me being inspired as I call it, which for me becomes a response & desire to create, is a form of receiving ideas & messages that are not a direct interpretation of the actual source of the inspiration. I am also a firm believer in giving credit where it is due. As small as it may seem if something someone does or something I see triggers a creative idea or response, I am grateful for it. Nothing is really small if it can have some impact on others.
As simple as it may seem the outfit that Meredith is wearing in the above photo during Blogfest 2011…struck me on various levels. I saw that turquoise bracelet with the deep magenta/fuchsia top & was stunned at how fabulous she looked & how beautifully she stood out in the crowd. I myself cannot pull off wearing this much color (not without the makeup of a drag queen anyway). This is the benefit of being a vivacious redhead I believe. As much as I play with & love color I had never thought to combine the color of natural turquoise (my favorite color for the moment) with such a vibrant red violet.
It was this very photo that inspired my somewhat experimental paintings of Turquoise & Magenta-Moxie which I have listed right now on Etsy.
I used to paint/draw stylized realism, but over the past few years my artistic expression has become very loose & adventurous. This color combo was initially inspired by the outfit Meredith wore in the above picture. I added the symbolism with the animal print because to me it represents, independence, drive, boldness, tenacity…basically “Moxie” which Meredith actually helped me realize I was visually trying to define after the fact, but couldn’t put a name to.
It is difficult for me to show through photos how these really look. They are a combination of layers of acrylics & clear gel acrylic resins that create a dimension you can look into & through. I have also created them in a way that you can hang them as you please to create any form or pattern desired as shown here. My signature symbol fairly subtle for this reason.
They were created for a small space & although I have many ideas as to what color combinations they could be used in I have only had the time to throw one mood board together using a new/old favorite Olioboard. A great tool for presenting concepts that I have vowed to get back into using thanks to Leslie Carothers. I may have to add more of these ideas later since I cannot help myself & I have two other drafts in the works…
inspired to create by... 