Inuvik (July 18/03) - Art, it's said, is the creation of something from nothing. Pulling an idea from the ether, to communicate thoughts and feelings to the world through painting on a canvas, or etching into a century-old block of stone has never come easy to artists.

The inspiration comes from as many sources as there are artists and each has their own way of pushing that spirit from themselves to capture it in their work.

Archie Beaulieu has been an artist as long as he can remember, often wearing his precious pencils down to nubs with sketches in residential school in Fort Smith.

Beaulieu's inspiration for his unique abstract wildlife work comes from the way his grandmother told him to see the world.

"She told me all the religion and the legends behind the animals and how the Dene people captured their style for decorating clothing," Beaulieu said.

He sees the image in his mind and roughs the work out in pencil first.

"I prepare before I put paint to canvas," Beaulieu said. I do sketches first and I also pick the colours before I start an individual painting."

"I just don't take a canvas and start slapping paint on it."

Inuvik's Norman Anakina started carving 10 years ago but quit for about five years. He took up the craft again last year.

Before carving a piece, he has the carved image in his mind and seeks out a piece of stone that will help him accomplish that work.

"I have the idea and I try to find a stone that will fit," Anakina said. "If you want to carve a walrus, you can't just pick any stone."

He hefts a big block of green Brazilian soapstone to his desk and visualizes the sculpture beneath the dense rock.

"I was looking at it and looking at it and thought I'd carve a polar bear standing up," Anakina said. "He'll be sniffing the air, like they do when they hunt."

Fort Smith painter Helene Croft said she has many ideas in her mind about what she will paint next, but when she sits and stares at the blank canvas, the finished product often seems a very long way away.

"A lot of times I don't have a clue what's going to happen," Croft said.

To stir the inspirational stew, she has hundreds of photographs, clippings from magazines. The real art comes from the mood she wants to inspire in the piece, but defining the subject is often the hardest part of the process.

"Sometimes I'll sit for hours figuring out what to do and I get all stressed out," Croft said. "When my kids come home for lunch they can tell something is brewing."

"When I finally get the idea, it's like a relief and I can start working," she said. "I know where I'm going and it feels really, really good."

For Tuktoyaktuk carver Derrald Pokiak Taylor, the beautiful secret can stay trapped in the stone for a long time, before he can coax it out.

"It doesn't come out right away," Taylor said. "You can spend anywhere from a couple minutes to a couple months just looking at a piece of stone, trying to figure out what you're going to do."

Taylor once kept a block of stone for a year before the inspiration came to him.

"I just kept looking at it and I kept changing my ideas of it," Taylor said. "Finally after that year of looking at it, it took me about a week."

He says the shape of the stone will often reveal itself to him and once that's determined, the rest comes fairly easy.

"If you get a square block, it's hard -- very hard, but if you get a weird-shaped stone, then you'll find your movement."