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Fayetteville artist Dana Louise has. All of those things.
For the painter and former member of the Fayetteville Underground artist collective, it was an image of a sun-soaked lava pool surrounded by wild hydrangeas taken on one of the mid-Atlantic Azores islands that, once she laid eyes on it, changed everything.
Louise started a Kickstarter, raised the money, and planned a seven-week artist residency to paint on the island of Flores in the Azores. While she was there, with plenty of downtime on her hands, she picked up the guitar for the first time since high school.
And that was where some real magic happened.
“While I was there someone showed me some music, and I just felt like I needed to learn it,” she said. “The only instrument around was the guitar. Once I picked it up, I don’t think I put that guitar down again for the rest of my trip.”
Louise spent hours on the island, first learning the shapes of chords that she had seen played countless times as the daughter of Trout Fishing in America’s Ezra Idlet, and then learning to play some of her favorite songs by other artists. Soon, she was picking out her own melodies and writing her own songs.
And what was supposed to be a seven-week painting residency turned into an intensive, seven-month study on songwriting and the guitar.
“By the end of my stay, I think I had three hours worth of material,” she said.
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