A Story about inspiration and Muses

When it's about my principal art, my inspiration comes from nature, what I see or would like to see, and how I would like things to be.

But, what I will write about is how certain people become in muses for an artist.

Let's start by understanding the beginning of the muses. According to Greek Mythology, Muses are inspirational goddesses of the arts. Daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, and partners with Apollo's crew (Olympic god of music and arts). Who had romances with all of them, leaving descendants. They went down to whisper ideas and inspire those mortals that invoke them.

In ancient times, you would invoke the muses to receive their inspiration to create art, but, with the imposition of Christianity, these types of cults were penalized and forbidden, the reason why it was losing strength and use.

But this doesn't avoid that nowadays, earthly muses exist that equally inspire artists to create wonderful art.

Muses (women or men) were inspirations for the contemporary artist, because of their beauty, for having something special, being captivating and seductive, and were immortalized in their most beautiful and peculiar works.

Women like, Beatrice Portinari (Dante Alighieri), Lydia Delectorskaya (Henri Matisse), Catherine Hessling (Henri Matisse and Jean Renoir), Jacqueline Roque, Olga Khokhlova and Sylvette David (Pablo Picasso), Elena Diakonova aka Gala Dalí (Salvador Dalí), or, Simonetta Vespucci (Sandro Boricelli) who was the inspiration to "The Birth of Venus". All of them were earthly muses.

The list could never finish, thousands of people or more were immortalized thanks to artists in their canvas, words or, melodies.

I, like other artists, have my muse, she was the inspiration of two of my works that I love. She's Anna Jiménez, also an artist, lover of books, and knowledge, eternal student, and beautiful from my eyes. She's my daughter that unknowingly motivates me to be better.

She inspired first my illustration "Infinity" (2018). I love this interpretation as much as I love her beautiful, long, and abundant hair and her love for reading. In this illustration, her hair is the protagonist, she's reading an Isaac Asimov's book and is getting lost in the space. Infinity represents the abundance of knowledge and her never-ending hair.

The following work was two years later, "Girl Reading at Night" (2020), again, you can see her waist-long hair, and she's reading a book in the Night. This is a homely version of her that describes her perfectly, she loves to travel everywhere through books in the comfort of her home. In this illustration, I made an homage to Pink, our white pink-nose cat, that it's no longer with us, but she had a special relationship with Anna. Both enjoy a quiet and peaceful night with good readings, the moon, and stars.

I'm sure she'll keep inspiring me to be better every day, and probably she'll be the muse of future illustrations. Time would tell.