Inspiration & The Artist’s Journey

Mar 31

By Michael McClure

Like most artists I have my heroes, the artists who paved the way and continue to inspire me every time I open a book filled with their beautiful work. Sorolla, Sargent, Payne and Zakharov come to mind right away. When I am lucky enough to find their original work hanging in a museum or top gallery, I am amazed at the rich vibrant colors they put in all the right places, creating the illusion of something real and alive, though it’s just paint. Their styles vary widely, but the common thread is their mastery of color, finding just the right shade and tone which goes beyond mere description and creates a mood, a feeling, a vibration.

The Russian artist Fedor Zakharov, I look at just about every day. He was classically trained in the finest academy in Moscow in the years after the second world war. Food was still in short supply, but fortunately the soviet state was committed to supporting the most talented art students, so he didn’t lack for the basics, including art supplies. After graduating, he was assigned to a teaching position in a small town in Crimea, considered the riviera of the USSR. There, after the dreary winters of Moscow, his love of nature took full flight and his colors came alive.

He painted every day and quickly mastered the brilliant light of that southern region, with which he felt a deep soul connection. Almost from the very start of his career, his gift for expressive color combined with his intensely personal vision separated his work from any other. Even though he inhabited a relative backwater within the soviet cultural system, artists and patrons made the long journey to seek out him and his work. He was considered a master’s master.

I feel that the artists’ journey is one of exploring who they are and finding the best way to express their unique vision. That is my lifelong quest, which reveals myself to me little by little. Like an athlete doing stretches before an event, I prime my pump with glimpses of the great ones before I sit at my easel and observe what my hand and eye want to create in front of me.