Hilton and Mears: Inspiration…

In our most recent ‘Hilton and Mears’ Chris and I shared our first reflections around interpretation, discussing how we as artists find inspiration and through craft demonstrate our interpretation. This last twelve months I have found myself on a fascinating journey of discovery and personal reflection, inspired by learning to work in a new scale. Photographs of this work shared transatlantically flowed into conversations. We’ll pick things up after sharing a recent composition…

Pont Dulas just feels like something that’ll last, just to enjoy looking at, doesn’t it? I enjoyed reading your Pannier update and, like then, I see a richness, a fulsomeness, in this look of N. It feels not just modeled in N, but appreciated.

I was looking at the image and feeling something along the lines 'this isn't about 'this is N' anymore, it's beyond scale’, as if I have learnt to express myself in this new medium. The work is every bit as fulfilling which suggests to me that the art lies with the artist, not the scale.

I like the way you said that. I like it a lot. 

I keep paraphrasing ‘this is N’ because my attraction to the scale is so strong and you have a way of creating things in this beloved scale that feel right, feel like the way I feel inside about models in this scale.

I suppose our natural tendency, because although you and I are interrogating our work more than perhaps the norm, at our heart we're still railway modellers - that natural tendency to be 'proud' or 'amazed' of the photos of my work in this scale.

They cross the scale boundary.

I suggest the modelling is neatly executed (with heart) which allows us to suspend reality and feel something (other than ‘that's an awful gap under that building’ or ‘gosh that static grass is too uniform’) - feel something real.

The art of railway modelling.

Scale agnostic.

It’s an interesting way to think about “scale agnostic”. It has an almost calm about it when you think about it. 

Instead of creating a feeling, welcoming a feeling. 

Maybe in the traditional process:

1. we start from a feeling (“inspiration”?

2. we design a layout hoping to create a magnet to attract that feeling to us?

3. we hope the feeling comes back? then

4. if it does the feeling feels recreated (cloned?)?

Where what you’re describing is a matter of flowing with the feeling and never leaving. Again, subtle reflections on language. For me I realised a place where I disrupted the flow, made it less recognizable, instead of more?

So how do we free ourselves from 'direction' or 'expectations' and just practice model making from the heart, rather than the head? I feel like I have achieved it through both repetition and my love for the hobby and prototypes that inspire me. Is it that love that imbues each creation?

My work is an interrogation of what it feels to be foundationally-attracted to model trains. I’m no longer trying to relate a story of real railroading as a vehicle for my reason. My want to work in model railways feels like more than just making models of trains. Even when I don’t want the articles of our hobby I still want to connect to the hobby in an almost hypothetical way. I understand my connection as being more like a need for human connection perhaps?

So to paraphrase, your work is embued with your love of model trains. That love, attraction, manifests itself in the care you pay to certain elements over others... your interpretation fed by your own experiences.

So perhaps rather than try and recreate other modellers work, we need to free ourselves from that comparison, and rather, focus, through artistic practice on our own modelling.

As a child I observed others modelling and tried to recreate it.

Later I saw reality and tried to recreate that.

Both equal and valid inspiration.

It was only when I stopped trying to copy and instead let all I had learnt of the craft be driven by my love of both model and real railways that my own work blossomed. 

So rather than interrogate or distill interpretation, the message is about finding your own path?

I find it interesting to trace back through my relationship with the hobby. 

I certainly grew up in the hobby. 

I practiced it for a long time (maybe a decade) without any real interaction with real trains. I did have the model magazines as guides. Like anyone learning anything probably a lot of my vernacular and goals were inherited from their pages. 

By the end of decade two I was railfanning and learning about real railways. I think this is when… I thought the way was… for me… I thought the way was to start modelling the real thing. 

Then until maybe five years ago I started to feel like I understood where I was going wrong and now, as I am here, I feel more alive in my work. 

It’s become less about finding what I don’t have, can’t do; more about expressing what I need to say.

We started this conversation with a mutual appreciation of a ‘work of art’ from my hand, in your beloved N scale. We end with an acknowledgement that our lives have shaped and formed the artists we have become. In our quest to interrogate our understanding of inspiration we have recognised something that sits at the very heart of the hobby we practice. A personal story. 

Railway modeling can be many things to different people, but for those that feel a deeper connection then this artistic journey doesn’t start from copying another’s work or comparing one’s efforts to those in a magazine. Instead we use inspiration as a fuel for our own fire, refining our story telling through a practice of the craft. 

Railway modelling is the greatest pastime in the world.

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In case you weren’t aware ‘labels' are a great way to navigate the blog. Chris and I have co-created a lot of material over the last few years, labelled 'hiltonandmears'. He has also contributed to a number of my rambles, labelled 'chris Mears'. Until next time though, more soon...