6 Artists Sharing the Strangest Places Their Ideas Came From

There’s a reason artists keep notebooks by their beds.

And sketchbooks in their bags. And voice memos on their phones full of half-finished thoughts recorded at 2am in the dark, trying not to wake anyone up, because the idea that just arrived cannot wait until morning.

Because here’s the thing nobody tells you about creativity. It doesn’t show up when you’re ready for it. It doesn’t wait for you to have a clean desk and a fresh canvas and the right playlist on. It shows up in the shower. In the middle of dinner.

On a walk you weren’t even paying attention to. In the strange foggy space between sleeping and waking when your brain finally stops trying and just starts seeing.

Every artist knows this feeling. That moment when something arrives out of nowhere and you have approximately thirty seconds to catch it before it disappears forever.

So, we asked our Arts to Hearts community to tell us honestly, where do your best ideas actually show up?

And what came back was so honest, so specific, and so deeply relatable that we genuinely couldn’t keep it to ourselves. Because almost nobody said their studio. Almost nobody said their desk or their sketchbook or the carefully curated creative space they’d spent so long setting up. And honestly? That told us everything.

In my garden & in my dreams

Here’s something we noticed going through all the responses. Almost nobody said their studio. Nobody said their desk or their sketchbook or their perfectly set up creative space. And that doesn’t surprise us because we think that’s just how creativity works. It finds you when you’re not looking for it. When you’re pottering around outside with your hands in the soil, not thinking about anything in particular. Or when you’re asleep and your subconscious finally gets to do what it’s been wanting to do all day.

Danielle Goulette @dmgdesignsmaine answered with the garden and the dream. And we love that so much. The waking world and the sleeping one. Both of them places where nobody is asking anything of her. Nobody is watching. Nothing needs to be performed. And in that freedom that’s where the ideas are.

It’s like a download when my finger touches the door knob

This one made us smile because of how specific it is. Most people when you ask this question will say something like nature or music or long walks. But every now and then someone gives you an answer so precise and so completely their own that it stops you. And we think knowing yourself that well knowing exactly when and where your brain comes alive is honestly one of the most useful things a creative person can figure out. Because once you know it you stop fighting yourself and trying to force things in all the wrong places.

Christine Ross @christinerossart knows her moment exactly, it’s the door, finger on the handle, about to leave the house. A snapshot arrives out of nowhere, complete and fully formed, and she doesn’t question it. She just trusts it. Her theory is that her mind needs a literal physical opening for creativity to come through. Like Bob Ross being channelled through a doorknob. We’re genuinely not questioning it.

In the middle of the night like 2-3 am when my sleep is interrupted

We started this whole article by talking about the notes app and the 2am voice memos and apparently we weren’t alone in that at all. There is something about the middle of the night that the creative brain just cannot resist. The world is quiet, nobody needs anything, and suddenly the idea that’s been hiding all day decides now is the time. And we’ve all learned the hard way that “I’ll remember it in the morning” is one of the biggest lies we tell ourselves.

Nitika @colorful.saga used to tell herself she’d write it down in the morning. And then morning would come and poof. Gone completely. We think every single creative person reading this has been exactly there. And now she picks up her phone the moment it arrives, 2am or not, because she’s learned what we’ve all eventually had to learn — the ideas that come in the middle of the night do not wait around for you to be more awake.

Showing up consistently makes space for ideas to become known

This is the one we kept coming back to. Because there’s so much conversation in creative spaces about inspiration about waiting for it, chasing it, hoping it arrives and so much less about what actually sustains a practice over time. And what this response says so quietly and so honestly is that the ideas aren’t out there somewhere waiting for the perfect moment to find you. They’re here. Right now. And they come to the people who are already in the room, already at the work, even on the days when nothing feels like it’s happening.

Isham @portraitsofmyself is not always inspired. Not always in love with what they are making. And they show up anyway. And we think that is genuinely one of the most powerful things a creative person can do.

When the world goes silent, the mind wakes up

There’s a particular kind of creative brain that collects things all day long notices everything, holds onto everything, processes everything and never really gets to do anything with it until the world finally goes quiet. And we think the world doesn’t make nearly enough room for that. It tells you that the productive hours are the daytime hours and that nighttime is for switching off. But for so many artists it’s actually the opposite. The quiet at the end of the day isn’t when creativity stops. It’s when it finally gets to breathe.

Shruti Maria Datar@shrutimariadatar put it so perfectly that we genuinely didn’t want to add anything to it. Lying in bed, world gone quiet, mind finally fully awake. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

While taking a shower

We saved this one for last. And honestly when we read it, we just laughed and then immediately felt seen. Because we think this might be the most universally relatable thing anyone has ever said about creativity. The shower. Of course it’s the shower. It’s always the shower. There’s actually science behind why this happens something about the warm water and the lack of stimulation creating the perfect conditions for the brain to wander freely. But honestly we don’t need the science. Every artist reading this already knows exactly what she means.

Vaishnavi Varadarajan @_vaish_artz_ said it in four words. No explanation needed. No context required. Just four words that every single creative person on this planet felt in their bones. And we kept this one for last because sometimes the simplest answer is the truest. The shower has been quietly responsible for more ideas than any studio, any notebook, any perfectly curated creative environment has ever been. And it probably always will be.

Reading through every single response to this question we kept coming back to the same feeling, that creativity is so much more present in people’s everyday lives than we sometimes give it credit for. It’s not waiting in the studio. It’s not locked behind the right conditions or the right mood or a dedicated creative hour that never quite arrives.

It’s in the garden and the dream and the door handle and the shower and the 2am phone note written in the dark. It was there the whole time. In all the places you weren’t looking for it. And we find that genuinely comforting. We hope you do too.

If you want to see every single response to this question and there were so many good ones that didn’t make it into this article we’ve linked the original post below. Go and read through the comments. You’ll feel very seen and very not alone.

Thank you honestly from the bottom of our hearts to every artist who took the time to answer this. We asked something simple and you came back with something so real and so generous that we’ve been thinking about it ever since. That’s what this community does every single time and it never stops meaning something to us.

We’re always here asking questions about your creative process, your studio, your inspirations, your blocks, the rituals you swear by, the things that aren’t working, the moments that changed everything because we genuinely believe that the most useful thing artists can do for each other is just be honest about what it’s actually like. Not the polished version. The real one.

So if you’re not already following us on Instagram, come and find us there. We ask questions like this all the time and the conversations that happen in the comments are honestly some of our favourite things on the internet. Drop your thoughts the next time you see one of our questions. Share what’s true for you. You never know who needs to hear exactly what you have to say.

And who knows, maybe next time it’ll be you we’re featuring.