My Biggest inspiration
When people ask what my biggest inspiration is, I don’t immediately jump to album covers, although they’ve definitely shaped the way I see and create, my influences stretch far beyond that. One of the biggest? The Sagrada Família in Barcelona.
Every time I go to Barcelona to visit my uncle and cousins, it’s the one place I always make time for. I never skip it, no matter how many times I’ve been. And somehow, it never feels the same twice. Maybe it’s because it’s still under construction, or maybe it’s how it interacts with the light, the weather, or even just where I am mentally when I visit. It’s not just a landmark, it feels like a living presence.
Even before you step inside, Gaudí’s genius is right there in front of you in the two façades. Each tell a different part of the same story but are completely different in tone and style. The Nativity Façade is overflowing with life, facing east, the dawn of new life. There’s so much detail, it’s almost overwhelming, like it’s been grown rather than built. It feels joyful and gentle, full of natural shapes and symbols. It celebrates not just the birth of Christ, but creation itself, hope, nature, new beginnings. It has that traditional craftsmanship you’d expect from an old church, but softened and organic like stone in bloom.
Then you walk around to the Passion Façade and the shift is jarring. Facing west towards the sunset, it’s cold, harsh and stripped back. The shapes are angular and sharp, the figures carved with raw honesty that verges on brutal. The sandstone columns stretch and strain like exposed bone and muscle. It captures the weight of suffering and sacrifice with an emotional intensity that’s hard to ignore. It doesn’t just depict death, it makes you feel it.
The contrast between the two façades, between life and death, softness and severity, is striking. The fact that they were built decades apart, by different generations of artists, add yet another layer. They don’t just show a story, they show how perspective evolves over time. How humanity changes, and how art can reflect that.
Together, the façades go beyond religion. They reflect life itself. Joy and pain. Beauty and struggle. Every time I move between them, I’m reminded that great art doesn’t shy away from complexity, it embraces it. It makes you think. It makes you feel. And to me, that’s everything.
And that’s just the outside.
