Here are some more tiles, 4″ x 4″, from that group I made for a friend. The theme of this post will be – how I get the ideas for these tiles.

The general answer is, I get ideas from everything. I think pretty much everything is interesting to look at, so I’m never short of subjects. I take my camera around with me everywhere (it’s just a little point and shoot, nothing special, but I do think it takes nice pictures and it has a good zoom, so that’s why I favor it over the phone camera).

I will take a picture because it’s a pretty scene, because it’s a bizarre scene, because I want to remind myself of something, because the scene reminds me of a different scene, because the people in the scene look interesting, strange, beautiful, or have arranged themselves in a noteworthy way, because the people are doing something interesting or ordinary, because the scene contains cars, buildings, trees, water, chairs, tables, clouds, swimming pools (I like all of these subjects very much) or because it features objects or people in patterns or color combinations I like.

In other words, I’ll take a picture of anything that’ll stand still long enough for a photo.

And that’s just what I see around me. I also get ideas from books I read, conversations I overhear, memories, sounds, something someone told me when I was young, something someone told me this morning, cars, buildings, trees, water, chairs, clouds, swimming pools…You get the idea.

Really, I don’t know where the ideas come from but I’m grateful they choose me.

OK. Enough generalizations. Here is what prompted some of these tile scenes, one by one.

Man in a rowboat – I was doing some collage poetry, taking words from a Hardy Boys book, and they were out in a boat in a storm. Honest, that’s the true source of this tile’s image.

Bird with a red eye – I had been reading about birds in Australia and  this is my idea of what one of the birds the author described looked like. Maybe.

Bed – I like furniture and I felt like making a checked quilt and a pillow, so, a bed fit the order. I like reading in bed so I made a bed I would like to read in.

Garden – I received several seed catalogs and they reminded me of how much I like the geometry of a garden, how much I like making little shapes, and so I made a garden. With a couple of spiral trees, because I felt the gardener should have a place to sit and rest.

House – I love to make house pictures. I imagine myself living in each one and put features I would like to have. This house is small, just a little cottage, so I would see it as being a place out near a lake, just for weekends.

Kitchen – I love my kitchen. It looks nothing like the one in this tile, but it’s the spirit of the thing – I love being in a kitchen. I would like to have a black and red tile floor like this one, maybe in that lake cottage I mentioned above.

Well, that’s the short tour. Anytime you ever want to know what prompted an artwork, just ask. Be ready for some odd answers. That’s what keeps this whole going, isn’t it – finding the interesting in the ordinary?