Futurism, Gucci and car washes: the inspiration behind Maaike Canne’s paintings of an imaginary city

Thread of Inspiration is a series in partnership with Pinterest which explores how inspiration can come from unexpected places. Throughout the year we'll be inviting a host of creatives to create amazing artworks, and sharing the intriguing stories behind how they come up with new ideas. Every other month a new creative will be introduced, tasked with creating new works inspired by the artist who came before them in the chain.

In her work as an illustrator, Rotterdam-based creative Maaike Canne often looks to unusual realms for inspiration. Never placing limits on herself for possible influences, her work – which often includes architectural structures – follows a process of “placing objects out of context” in order to “look at shapes and spaces differently,” she tells It’s Nice That. “For instance, if you want to draw a clock and you look at clocks for inspiration, chances are it’s going to be a pretty straightforward design. But, drawing a clock inspired by cars, skyscrapers and boxing rings will lead to new connections, and a new way of thinking.”

It was exactly this way of thinking that made us believe Maaike would be the perfect contributor for our first project in collaboration with Pinterest: Thread of Inspiration. A project that sees a creative explore an idea via Pinterest, Maaike took her first seed of inspiration from animator Ricardo Bessa’s Nicer Tuesdays talk in January. Discussing his work for the television show The End of the F***ing World, Maaike interpreted his use of fantasy as an opportunity to redesign a city in her own creative vision.

Developing into a series of fantasy architectural paintings, inspired by the likes of Nathalie du Pasquier and car washes, how Maaike found herself at this outcome demonstrates how inspiration can often lead creatives down unexpected paths.

At this stage in a project, when her brain is swimming with ideas, Maaike often utilises Pinterest. She tells us how the platform is useful “as a tool to collect, and structure your images and thoughts,” and the illustrator appreciates the way it allows for easy order when dealing with “the chaos of different images.” In general, this allows her to have “more of a birds eye view of what’s happening in my mind,” she describes. “It helps you understand what images have in common, and what attracts you to it and understand your own taste, interests and the way you look at the world.” As a result, Maaike never resists saving an image she finds visually interesting, saving everything and anything that catches her eye. “Even though I may not need it right now,” she says, “it’s nice to be able to come back to it.”

With an aesthetic and overarching theme of futuristic architecture saved in her own mind, Maaike then took herself away from Pinterest to draw a mind map of routes for where the project could turn next. Enforcing some structure on her idea by hand, this worked in the same way to her process of saving imagery, helping to “discover new relationships among seemingly unrelated ideas and information.” She then uploaded this hands-on idea generation back to her on-going digital board, creating space to look deeper into certain areas, moving into the discovery phase of the project, while still featuring in her “birds eye view” of ideas.

This is also enhanced by Maaike’s decision to create the work by hand instead of digitally, adopting “a flat, silk-screen-like approach and a sculptural point of view,” she says. To draw viewers in even further, she’s also written carefully considered captions for each piece in order to “give a warmer, more human perspective and make you connected to the work in a different way.”

Each piece also pulls from a varied pool of references taken from Maaike’s Pinterest board, such as the bank referencing the Cray 1 Computer in its structure, whereas the CIA building is a mix of 2001: A Space Odyssey, water towers and pinball games. Particular references are also dotted throughout each of her paintings too, such as the colour palette directly relating to Gucci’s SS20 show as mentioned, and details from Art Deco radios, Fortunato Depero and Amédée Ozenfant’s paintings. Finally, she concludes that while the work is inline with her usual creative output in terms of topics, “I’ve never really used this combination of texts with images to trigger new fantasies.”

Moving forward, the ideas explored by Maaike will now be handed to another creative to dive into, before they pass on their interpretation too, with Maaike adding, “I hope the next contributor has just as much fun working on this project as I did!”