Summer Memories Series: Inspired

Published on by J. Kelland Perry

What is it that inspires our desire to create?

What moves an artist to draw or to paint a picture? What sparks the passion in a writer to pen a poem or a story? What is it that prompts a photographer to run for her camera and try to capture that perfect shot?

Here are a few things that give me continued inspiration:

1.  The ocean, which surrounds me. No surprise there, right?

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Every day, it is a slightly different colour, morphing between shades of blue sapphire, steel grey, or deep, dark navy with racing waves and frothy white-caps. On other days, it is as calm and flat as a mirror. The sea is a living thing: mercurial, organic, merciless, and endlessly beautiful. 

2. I’ve always had a passion for all animals (no, not just my cats! 😉 ). Horses, dogs, whales, and birds… …natural beings of the forest and untamed creatures of the sea and sky.

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3. Teaching children about Nature, and why we need to respect it, appreciate it and care for it is a spark for my imagination. I love answering their many questions…… and listening to them tell of their own experiences in the beautiful, natural world.

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Have you ever noticed how Children and Nature go so happily together?

“As a child, one has that magical capacity to move among the many eras of the earth; to see the land as an animal does; to experience the sky from the perspective of a flower or a bee; to feel the earth quiver and breathe beneath us..”

~ Valerie Andrews, A Passion for this Earth

“Children are born naturalists. They explore the world with all of their senses, experiment in the environment, and communicate their discoveries to those around them.”

~ Audubon Nature Preschool

Do you have special childhood memories of exploring Nature?

What fills you with inspiration? Do tell!

First posted on this date, August 5, 2015

24 thoughts on “Summer Memories Series: Inspired”

  1. I grew up in suburban London, deafened by the planes taking off from Heathrow Airport just a mile from where we lived. Horrible! But at the end of our garden was a little stream. The river and its banks were my window onto another world, a welcome oasis in the urban desert. Butterflies fluttered colourfully, bees buzzed, mice scuttled, an occasional heron fished for its dinner and slow worms lurked in the undergrowth. (Do you have slow worms in Newfie? They’re lizards without legs, like snakes but without the implied menace and Biblical associations!)

    It was on that modest riverbank that I learned to love Nature; it shaped my life.

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      1. Reading your blog will help revive memories of a happy visit to Newfie in 2017, supplementing the Ozfm radio show that we still listen to via the internet every Sunday afternoon while playing Scrabble!

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  2. Jennifer, ‘The sea is a living thing: mercurial, organic, merciless, and endlessly beautiful.’ Yes. And you’ve captured that in your photographs. What inspires me? Connection with people, with nature, with the quiet truth of things. Just like you. 💙

    Much love,
    Khadija 💕🤗

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  3. Moving to New Melbourne as a child – overlooking the ocean and beach certainly gave me an appreciation for nature along with the trees surrounding our home!

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  7. People inspire me. Watching them, listening to them and talking to them. Each human is unique in some way. The other thing that amazes me is how we all have something in common, no matter our age, gender, race, and how we were brought up. Every day I meet someone new is a good day for me.

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Talk to me.