Inspiration or Discouragement?

As you can see, Chris has put up all the these photos/paintings of pictures he has found by artists who have created pictures that are similar to some of our work. I am going to be doing the same about Jacki's work a bit. But when I do that I would you to think about this question...When you see these pictures, do you get frustrated or discouraged, or do you feel like it is a way to motivate you and makes you want to "best" that artist. After seeing Chris's post of the paintings, and the arch nemisis I had last semester, I can say now that I look at these things and immediatly start studying what makes my work different/better/worse/similar to these other artists' work. Last semester, I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach, because does this not make my work original anymore? Then I studied mine hard, and even though, orginally, I wanted to give up on my whole idea, I started looking at his and I felt like mine grew on me even more. I started to become protective almost of my pictures. I wanted to make them the best they could be, and knew that I had done mostly everything in my power to make my signature on my art. So, when you see works that are so similar to yours, how do you react? Does that negative or positive feeling stick with you, or does it change as time goes on, and the more you look at your artwork and your competing artist?

Here are pictures I found when I was researching, by Roderik Henderson. It reminded me so much of the ideas we were throwing out to help Jacki add that "surprise." It also reminded me of the pictures she has taken already. That ability to want us to develop a relationship with the subjects in her pictures. I always feel the need to want to know so much more when it comes to her photos, and I am so intruiged by the way she views people. I think Henderson does this well also.