inspiration bored

Last week I tore down my inspiration board, which had consisted solely of images I collected over a decade ago when I was a gung-ho botanical painter. They were pinned or draft-dotted to a 12" wide floor-to-ceiling wall protrusion between our kitchen and living room where everyone could see them all the time. I left the jumble of all of it up there for all this time, thinking that those images define my aesthetic and were reminders of what I wanted to achieve someday.

They definitely were good reminders. There were images of peonies and persimmons from my idol Jeffrey Ripple, note cards with Charles Rennie Mackintosh's whimsical but accurate flowers printed on the fronts, and pages of portraits by Lucian Freud ripped from some old issue of Vanity Fair. There were Polaroids of my process work from the early Aughties, postcards from all the openings I attended mostly for the free booze and snacks way back when, and myriad random other botanical illustrations.

I was surprised to find that I am really happy to have that piece of wall clear. I told David it was a place where we can start to pin real estate or other images together as we work to get ourselves out of our small flat someday, but now I think we'll keep it empty. When you live somewhere as long as we've lived here, it can become really hard to make it feel fresh. Getting rid of vestiges of a past life that means nothing to me now on the surface was a good call. I literally breath easier when I'm working in the kitchen at night without my that part of my past hanging right over my shoulder. 

I started thinking about what other places in our home might hold that kind of old news and immediately flashed on our stacks of books. My books in particular are mostly leftover from architecture school or were purchased during long-faded obsessions with different architects and artists and places in the years right after I graduated. I have no intention of getting rid of those books, but when we move someday they won't deserve that kind of prominence anymore. 

I hope you have a great weekend! We're headed to Marin for one last pool day before Oliver starts preschool next week. Summer's pretty much over for us here, and that's a bummer. 

xoxo