Creative Sabotage or Inspiration: Kandinsky and me

What’s the worst thing we can do to ourselves as creatives? Compare our work to others? Compare ourselves to people we perceive to be more successful, more talented, more driven?

I’ve been thinking about this for a few reasons recently. The first was when I was wandering around the Kandinsky exhibition (at the Tate Modern) last summer.

One of my most powerful childhood memories is the first time I saw Kandinsky’s paintings at the Neure Pinacotec in Munich. I was twelve years old, and completely mesmerised by art for the first time in my life. It was as if the colours and shapes and sheer energy of the images impacted on me physically, and I’ve never forgotten the experience. His work still influences the way I paint and more specifically the way I relate to colour and structure in my work.