Why do artists travel?
Peru’s Nazca desert glyphs
The passports are on the table. The suitcases are getting heavier.
In a complicated world, travel can feel like a hard choice. But ask an artist why they still go, and the answer is simple: because staying the same isn't really an option.
Artists travel to disrupt routine and find something new. Travel stimulates the artist and brings a new awareness to their art. They want to be changed.
Encountering a different culture, its history, rituals, visual language, and daily life, gives artists raw material that can't be found at home. Travel breaks open perception. Unfamiliar streets, faces, and landscapes force the eye to actually see again rather than glide over the known. New sensory inputs — sounds, smells, colour palettes, food, scale — activate parts of the brain that routine dulls.
Artists become time travellers. Seeing art in place, Byzantine mosaics in Istanbul, Baroque altarpieces in Rome, gives it a depth that museum reproductions never can. Travel exposes the artist to unfamiliar visual languages, textures, colour palettes, and spatial relationships they simply can't encounter at home.
Routine is often the enemy of creative growth. When you're navigating a blue street in Marrakesh, eating new food like Japanese dumplings on the street, hearing a language you don't understand, the brain shifts into a more alert, receptive mode. New sensory inputs activate parts of the brain that routine dulls. Artists often describe travel as a kind of creative charging.
The four artists here were enthusiastic travellers. Each brought their new perceptions to their art and created unique masterpieces.
Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was a British and Mexican surrealist painter and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City where she was influenced by Mexican folklore, local culture, and a new circle of artists. She was one of the last surviving participants in the Surrealist movement of the 1930s.
Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968
)
Marcel Duchamp’s life was defined by constant travel between Europe and the United States, which directly influenced his artistic, nomadic, and "anti-art" philosophy. His journeys were characterized by wartime escapes, artistic reorientations, and the development of "portable" art that could travel with him.
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986)
was an avid traveller who visited over
49 countries across nearly every continent, with her adventures influencing her art and home design
.
Starting with domestic trips in the 1920s and international journeys in the 1930s, she continued exploring until 1983, visiting Costa Rica at
age 96.
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1654) was a pioneering Baroque painter who worked across Italy in Florence, Venice and Rome, and at the court of Charles I in London. She specialized in dramatic biblical and mythological scenes featuring powerful female protagonists — Judith, Susanna, Cleopatra — rendered with bold chiaroscuro and emotional intensity.
We’ll take Travis Elborough’s inspiring book on our next journeys. Mexico, Winnipeg and Iceland are waiting for us.
Until next time amigos, travel like an artist.
Courage Drifter