My ‘Inspired By’ posts began as a way to explore what makes me tick as an artist, what I’m drawn to, what makes my heart sing, what I might want to try out in terms of marks or colour combinations or compositions. They are also a way for me to share the work of artists whose work I love. I don’t advocate copying other artists instead of making our own work, however inspiring they are to us, but I do believe that we can learn from each other on our solitary artist journeys. This website is dedicated to the philosophy that you have a significant and unique offering inside you, waiting to be released. I created a course to help you with this very thing, which you can find by clicking here. May you be inspired to bring forth what’s within you!

My ‘Inspired By’ posts are usually about painters, since that’s my main medium. However, when I recently came across the work of Gregory Colbert, I just had to include it.

On this occasion I’m not inspired to try out a technique, or learn from how another artist creates a particular style or artwork. I’m inspired in my soul, for want of a better way of putting it. I think you will understand what I mean, looking at these images.

Gregory Colbert is a photographer. I love photography as both a hobby and as a form of creative expression, but I don’t tend to buy it as art for my home. In terms of being viscerally moved, for me it tends to come from paint, the movements and feelings and energy of the painter transcribed onto canvas that I can feel in my skin and my heart when I stand in front of it.

Occasionally though, I come across a photographer whose work I absolutely dream of having on my walls, just so I could stand in front of it each day and feel my heart expand.

It is I think testament not just to Gregory Colbert’s extraordinary photographs but also to my recent breaking open {and its subsequent and ongoing consequences} that I was moved to tears just looking at his work on my little computer screen.

If you’ve read The Alchemist or The Little Prince you may have felt what these images show. I’ve mentioned before Paulo Coelho’s phrase ‘the soul of the world’, and for me these photographs show us what that looks like.

I am skirting the subject of actually trying to describe them, and really, any words I came up with would just be my own filter and detract from what anyone can see with their own eyes, and more to the point, with their own soul.

I only suggest that you take a few moments to really look, to soak up each image. Beyond the perfect compositions and beautiful specimens of the human and animal kingdom, look at what lies beyond that.

This is what Colbert says of his work:

I think of my life’s work as a celebration of all of nature, an orchestra that plays not the sounds of one musician, the music of one species, but rather an expression of all of nature’s songs.

To see more of his heart opening photographs and learn more about his work, visit his website.