‘Make notes all the time’: artists from Jonathan Yeo to Cornelia Parker on how to find inspiration

Gavin Turk

Inspiration is quite hard to define – if you try to articulate it, it sort of slips away. My most creative moments, or the times I have my best ideas, are probably when I’m in the middle of doing something else. It almost frees up this other part of your mind. I think it does come from a cloud at the back.

I carry a notebook, to take notes of conversations and things I see, but I very rarely look back through them. It’s as if once I wrote it down, I remembered it. I’m of the faith that if the idea is sound enough you’ll remember it anyway.

Mat Collishaw

Most of my inspiration comes from reading books – pretty old-school.

Artists’ block is for amateurs. If you’re going to be professional about it, you have to instigate a system which deals with block. For me, it’s making notes all the time, or collecting scrapbooks of images and drawings in books. I have a library of things I’ve built which interest me, for whatever reason, across a very broad section of media.

Martin Creed

Often, first thing in the morning, I’m in a wee dreamy bubble that hasn’t yet been dashed on the rocks of reality. It’s a nice time for some daydreaming, which I think is important.

I drink coffee, usually in bed, and make notes. That can go on for an hour or two.

I wouldn’t use the word "inspiration" in describing my process. I would say that I try to cope with life as best I can, and that my work is a reaction to life. It can be anger, as in, "this is all a load of b------s", I want to make something to express that, or simply, if I’m on the Tube, and an idea just comes into my head. I suppose you might call that inspiration, but I think it’s just a reaction to what’s going on around me.

I’d say a lot of my work comes from not feeling sure about things... It’s like, I don’t know which colours I prefer, so I try to use all of the colours to work it out.

Cornelia Parker

I feed my imagination by being observational and having conversations.

I carry a notebook to make a little plan or jot something down. I think it’s about crystallising things that are tickling away at my subconscious. It helps to work out what I should pursue. I take hundreds of photos every day which I transfer to my computer, when I can quickly cull what’s not useful.

I experience doubt all the time. It can be destabilising for a while but it comes down to focus. If you make something physical and in the world, then you can look at it and you know what it is. If it’s not yet realised then it’s still a doubt. Making it tangible reaffirms it, gives it a right to exist. That can be confidence giving – the doubt has been vanquished.

The more you do the more you can do.

Yinka Shonibare CBE RA

Art is about making connections. My ideas are shaped by things, events, performances, even by current affairs and politics. And then I have an archive of things in my head as well, be that literature or mythology. It’s about linking all that together.

Sometimes I produce better art than at other times. Sometimes the ideas are – how shall we put it – c--p. There are times when your creative juices are plentiful, and then there are times when ideas are sparse and you don’t have such a rich well to draw from. But I can’t explain that logically.

Allen Jones RA

It’s important to have a routine, otherwise the distractions are endless. And you’ve got to make the time to do your work. I realised early in my career that I need four or five hours of quality time to be able to make any progress.

I feed my inspiration either in my library or by going out... I just like seeing life going on around me. I carry a notebook rather than a sketchbook.

I deal with artist’s block by switching medium. Because I make sculptures and prints as well as paintings, if one of them seems to have come to the end of some strand, then something else is on the boil in another medium.

Otherwise, there’s always tidying up, which I think it’s quite common among artists. But often it will mean I’ll discover old sketches that will spark an idea.

Jonathan Yeo

I have ideas all the time and they’re mostly terrible ones; the trick is knowing which ones to concentrate on.

I feed my inspiration by looking at other artists’ work. It’s how I learned to paint in the first place and it still affects me very obviously when I see something exciting, or new. Sometimes it happens almost by osmosis, and only feeds into your work a year or two later.

I sometimes feel stuck. There are different tricks you can use, such as having mirrors in funny places so you can be surprised by a reverse angle. I often take pictures of a painting with my phone, and then look at it again a couple of days later. And seeing the painting in miniature changes things again.

I use my art books for problem solving, too. Looking at someone else’s work can unexpectedly offer a solution.

Pablo Bronstein

I feed my inspiration by buying a lot of things, and by rearranging them. I’m obsessed with architecture, history, design and interiors. I might buy a clock and draw it, and then a crazier clock, and then draw that, and then a more sober clock again. Then I might move on to pineapple lampshades or whatever the f--k.

I also go to galleries... I’m happiest in a place when the works are pre-1960. I carry a small Moleskine notebook with me, but I use it less and less. I make notes on my iPhone and then when I get home I draw them out. I also carry a lot of stuff in my head.

Mary Kelly

I feed my work by watching the news. I get inspired by the urgency of those issues and then I try to think, “What is it that journalism can’t do or say?”, and that’s the basis for a visualisation of something... I try to create something which I think is antithetical to the speed at which the news is churning.

I don’t get artist’s block exactly, more moments of doubt. What I do at those times is read, and there are certain things I read, too, such as Raymond Carver, Sylvia Plath and Jean Genet. They are all very different, but they shake something loose in me. I go back to them repeatedly and that seems to get me going.

Richard Wilson RA

I keep scrapbooks. If I see something unusual, I tear it out and stick it in. It might generate something – it’s like using cookbooks to cook a meal.

Many years ago, a late friend of mine told me he made sure to make three sketches every day, and I thought: what a clever thing to do, to get into the habit of generating ideas. Some days it’s hard, other days you can easily produce 10 or 15 pages.

I feed my inspiration by reading books, going out, having conversations, just maintaining an intensity with the world. You have to be a sponge, and every time you open the front door, you must begin absorbing.

I also like drifting around on the internet – you can see odd things, such as ships being launched, trains wrecking, people moving whole houses on great big loaders. I get a confidence from seeing those kinds of things. I think: if they can do it, so can I, and I can make it into an artwork.

Keith Tyson

I’m never short of inspiration: just look out the window – it’s so extraordinary, what’s going on out there.

Making art is a bit like farming. You’ll have long months where you’re just thinking up ideas, then another stage when you’re preparing and experimenting to make those ideas real. Then you get a finishing stage, when it’s all coming together – that’s the most exciting bit. After that you get the post-production blues, when it’s all over and you’re trying to think about what to do next. It’s a series of big cycles.

If I don’t keep to a routine, everything starts unravelling.

Ron Arad

Inspiration is everything that happened until two minutes ago, and ideas are the cheapest link in the chain.

Keith Coventry

You have to just start off with something very simple, and then the actual artwork – the content – comes out of your involvement with this very simple idea.

I suffer from artist’s block whenever I consciously try to find an idea. It happens all the time but you have to keep reminding yourself to relax. Only through making things and failing does something happen. It’s then that you recognise something is there. Then you go 100 per cent for it.

Robert Crumb

Inspiration seems to come from the murky depths. Lack of inspiration is never the problem. Fighting self-consciousness, self-doubts and the energy drain of the world: these are the things that kill inspiration. Taking yourself too seriously, taking other people’s opinions of your work too seriously, both the positive and the negative. It’s all about the ego. You have to be able to push your ego out of the way to let inspiration guide you.

Tricky stuff. I’ve no glib remedies.

Bob & Roberta Smith

It’s to do with keeping lots of notebooks... Blank sheets of paper excite me, I see them as opportunities.

I find that time orders me. One of the things about living now is that there is no blank time. You need blank time in the same way you need blank sheets of paper, and if you aren’t prepared to find a way of working in chinks and gaps of time you have available, you won’t do anything at all.

I feed my inspiration by looking at other people’s art. I love going to see exhibitions by my fellow artists but also by historic artists. I’m not at all daunted. I look at scale or colour in someone else’s work and I want to go back to the studio and make something that competes.

Susan Hiller

I think of art as being an unconscious, continuous process. Sometimes an idea comes to you because you’ve been mulling it over in the back of your mind. I don’t set time aside to think, it doesn’t work like that.

I feed my inspiration by paying attention to my dreams and by trying not to be orderly. If I’ve got a stack of pictures, for example, I like the fact that they’re randomly ordered, because looking through them, the juxtapositions can give me ideas. I also try to read a bit every evening, and that sometimes has very interesting, strange effects.

Before I get out of bed, I try to remember my dreams, and make some notes about them

Ralph Heimans

I always start work at 9am. Even though nothing else in my life ever follows a routine, I’m religious about my start time.

I feed my inspiration by immersing myself in the achievements of my subject. When I painted Vladimir Ashkenazy, for example, I listened to his entire musical legacy, and when I was painting the Queen I listened to the history of the British monarchy... My objective is to lose myself in their world. It brings new inspiration into every work, because you’re drawing on things you may not normally encounter. It enables the work to thrive.

Most artists suffer from a block at one time or another, and I deal with it pretty poorly. If you have the luxury of time, then turning a painting against the wall for a while is the best solution, because when you look at it again you can usually see what’s wrong straight away. To be honest, portrait painters hardly ever have time to do that – there’s always a deadline looming. In that case you just have to pull yourself out of it.

Subodh Gupta

Inspiration comes in cycles, like the moon waxing and waning. You work and work and then suddenly you’re totally empty. The next week your mind will be very creative and something will bond. I look for that moment – I wait for it but all you can do is keep feeding yourself.

Spencer Finch

There’s a magic and you don’t know when it’s going to hit you. It’s why I love being an artist. Weeks can go by when you do all sorts of s--t work and admin, then you have one day that makes up for it all. The idea of something coming from nothing, it’s wonderful. Nothing happens for a long time, and then something appears.