Wonder might be the start of something new.

What do you think?

What about wonder and art? I wonder, what would happen if artists stopped wondering?

What would happen to you – and to the world – if scientists and artists no longer wondered?

How does it feel to be an artist?
Being creative is a gift that you give yourself and the the gift is forever fulfilling.

Did you always want to be an artist?
I always wanted to be an artist, and never seriously considered anything else.

Who or what is your inspiration?
As for inspiration I assume that the question means – at the beginning – who was my inspiration?….I do not remember specifically…probably my mother who was quite creative and both my parents who fostered my creativity.

How do you get you ideas?
As for how I get my ideas I think that there are always life-long ideas that keep returning to an artist, but also along the way everything sparks ideas, with me it is, or has been, books and literature, but it could be anything, simply a vista that is strange or in some way compelling. Of course Alice in Wonderland is that kind of book, both compelling and mysterious.

• The Other Side of the Glass, 2010
• Michelle Stuart
• Michelle Stuart and Leslie Tonkonow Artworks and Projects

Do you ever get frustrated if you imagine something but can’t make it?
As for frustration, I actually embrace it, frustration is a powerful force.
Frustration challenges the person to seek a solution and that is very engaging. Looking for solutions is the most interesting part of life. It is the same as the journey is more than the destination.

Do you listen to music while you work?
Yes, I listen to music while I work, but not always, when I am really thinking about a solution I prefer silence.

If you visit the exhibition, we’d love to hear what you think about Michelle Stuart’s artworks. Let us know in the comments!

• Ceramic Skull, 1973
• Paul Neagu
• © The estate of Paul Neagu

Paul Neagu is interested in how people and things connect. He thought a lot about how things can be separate from one another but still connected at the same time – like the areas in the adult brain that deal with different functions. He was interested in these kinds of connections from the smallest, molecular level to the universal. He often constructed his works in a cellular form, meaning that they are made up of lots of individual compartments or units that link together somehow. The cellular construction of his works – such as this one, ‘Ceramic Skull’ – show visually the way we automatically keep things in different compartments in our mind.

When something catches your attention, you might become delighted or perhaps puzzled. You might stop to think about what you see because it stands out. Perhaps what you see is unfamiliar to you, and you begin to wonder. When you look at a work of art you have never seen before, you might wonder about what you are seeing and experiencing.

We wanted to know what children like you thought about some of the art works in the Alice in Wonderland exhibition at Tate Liverpool. Here are all the different questions they were inspired to ask the artists…

I began by sketching out the brain and working on each section individually.
The Wondermind illustrator did a tremendous job in capturing the rich and bold environments that comprised Alice’s Wonderland, and I really wanted to bring that vibrancy to my collage. After carefully choosing pieces of artwork I was left feeling slightly underwhelmed, as they looked a bit muted and subdued in tone compared to the lively colours that I wanted to use.

So I decided to put a wash over every section of the collage. I lowered the transparency of the assorted images and simply dropped my preferred colours on top using an art program on my computer.

This did make my collage look more like the original Wondermind illustration but I felt like I had maybe changed the artworks too much; I really wanted people to be able to tell that they were from Tate. This stage was pivotal in the process of making this collage. I looked again at the pieces I had chosen, changed my mind, and decided to position the art differently. Instead of choosing two to three pieces per section I was using ten to twelve. This made the collage look more like an environment then an illustration; completely bursting at the seams with Tate’s artwork.

In the end, I didn’t quite get the colours that were in the original wonder-brain illustration but sometimes the art you’re making can change a lot while you’re making it. Now my collage has an entirely new identity of its own. It looks more like a hand-made collage, and is a wonderful mixture of art and the brain!

We would love to see any artwork, stories, photographs, sketches, ASCII art or music that has been inspired by Wondermind. Put them in the comments and we’ll share them on the site!

What is your inspiration for taking photographs?
My inspirations are memories, dreams, stories, my fantasy and also my daughters and granddaughter, who are my most often motivs. I would like to express something with my pictures, what you cannot say with words. Things which you can only feel and then see (or the other way around).

How do you make illusions?
This is a beautiful question but very difficult to answer. I think I do not make illusions. Illusions happen when the viewer is open to seeing them. The different visual pictures in my photographs create illusions, but the illusions only become alive when you are open to go inside the motives in your mind.

How do you set the scene?
I am not really thinking or caring about the scene setting. I use what is already there – nature, interiors of rooms. I wait for environments, which do something with me inside and they are then the places, which I choose for taking pictures.

• Nyima 405, 2009
• Annelies Štrba
• Courtesy of the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London

I wonder why the girl is lying down. Why is she?     
I would like the viewer to get active in front of the pictures. When the girl lies down you can go into the figure in your mind, into her dreams, and from there something wonderful will come back from the figure to you. Therefore the picture, the lying girls and you must be very calm for this. You must be concentrated and very open at the same time.

• Nyima 438, 2009
• Annelies Štrba
• Courtesy of the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London

When you make your work how do you make it look like real life?     
I do not know how I make it! But I am working on the pictures until they look real for me.

Why do you take photos and make videos instead of drawing or painting?  
I am not a painter and not a drawer! Taking pictures with my cameras, still or moving pictures, is the most natural act for me. After I took them I turn them in to paintings. I am a new painter – without oil colour but with digital colour.

• Nyima 445, 2009
• Annelies Štrba
• Courtesy of the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London

Can you draw any of your photographs?
No I don’t draw! It is important for me that the moment when I took the picture was real! When I would re-draw them with a pencil or so they would loose their magic for me. They are real as photographs. The word “Photo-graphy” means “drawing with light”. That is what I do: I draw with light.

If you visit the exhibition, we’d love to hear what you think about Annelies Štrba’s artworks. Let us know in the comments!

What is your inspiration for your work?
I am interested in the cycles of life and death and the repetitive nature of storytelling, explored through myth, memory, dreams and fairytales. I am also inspired by where I live and the relationships and conversations I share with people.

• Run Rabbit, Run Rabbit, Run Run Run, 2007 (video, duration: 2 mins)
• Samantha Sweeting
• Courtesy of the artist

How do you set the scene?
I often work at home or in other domestic settings, where the scene is already set and I am part of it. If I am presenting in a gallery or another external context, I like to re-create a similar atmosphere by introducing key elements that are important to me, for example taking my bed into the gallery and inviting people to lie in it.

I wonder why you have chosen a RABBIT/hare?
I like that such a familiar animal can also be magical. Rabbits symbolise re-birth and trickery, which is apt as I am re-animating the rabbit in my video. Like the White Rabbit, he is constantly running to escape time and death.

I wonder if the rabbit/hare in your work is alive?
I found the rabbit dead on a Devonshire lane and wanted to give it a proper burial. So I carried him to Wistman’s Wood on Dartmoor, where my friend Soriah was performing a Tuvan throat singing ritual. I started playing with the rabbit like a marionette and was mesmerised by the fluidity of the running movement. The video has given him eternal life.

When you make your work how do you make it look like real life?
It is real life! Just a stripped back and emotionally-heightened portrayal of it. I look for enchantment in the everyday.

Why do you take photos instead of drawing or painting?
There is something melancholic in the desire to contain life in an image, which appeals to me. I like that photographic images can be seen as both documents of reality and as fiction. I write a lot too, which shares a similar intimacy with drawing.

If you visit the exhibition, we’d love to hear what you think about Samantha Sweeting’s works in the comments…

• Secrets of Life – The Human Machine and How it Works: Perception through Impression, 1970
• Sir Eduardo Paolizzi
• © The Estate of Eduardo Paolozzi

Eduardo Paolozzi often shows images of the human head in his work. His heads are often presented fractured or made up of images of other things – creating a sense of the inner workings of the mind. This work is part of a series called Conditional Probability Machine, in which he explores brain function and the connections in the brain.

The head on the left is looking at a car, and the artist imagines a kind of film reel inside the mind which remembers the car and assigns the word ‘car’ to describe it.

Thinking about the videos you’ve watched here, what kind of memory do you think this is most like?

• Star/Steer, 1966
• Ian Hamilton Finlay
• © The estate of Ian Hamilton Finlay

Poet and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay experimented with the physical possibilities of language – its shape, texture, colour and the way it’s laid out on the page – as well recognising the power of language to shape our the way we see the world.

In 1967 he published his first book of concrete poetry (poetry in which the layout and typography of the words contributes to its overall effect). Look at the similarities between his work and this picture of the original layout of the mouse’s tail in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

• Proof sheet of the Mouse’s Tail cut up and re-pasted in a curve, early 1860s
• Charles Dodgson
• Reproduced by kind permission of Christ Church Library and Archive, University of Oxford

Now, try saying the word ‘star’ to yourself over and over again. Say it until it just seems like a sound with no meaning. What is a star? Eventually, the word just sounds like a mixture of letters… talk about forgetting the words!

Twinkle twinkle little bat
How I wonder where you’re at
Up above the world so high
Like a tea tray in the sky