Saving Pictures from the Flood: Using Visual Art in Creative Writing Workshops

Abstract

In order to write using specific, vivid detail, students first need to see that it is possible to communicate subtleties of feeling and perception powerfully through imagery. Davis believes that the interplay between illustrative objectivity and artistic expression is nearly the same, in essence, in the imagery of poetry and in the imagery of painting. He suggest ways in which apprentice writers, in an era in which the hyperaestheticized visual surface of life predominates over linguistic articulation, can, in assimilating visual imagery, feel free for a moment from the requirement to portray their imaginative experience in language, an experience which later allows them to portray their experience linguistically with less inhibition. Davis discusses the nature and function of imagery in poetry and visual art, and describes the dilemma of attempting to convince students to "show," rather than "tell," when in their experience exciting imagery is cheap, easy and void of meaning. He talks of the ways in which the paintings of Francis Bacon stimulated his own young imagination, making Modernist poetry an accessible, emotionally viable role model for his apprentice poetry. Finally, he shows how the imagery in particular paintings by Andy Warhol, Ralph Goings and Larry Rivers can demonstrate specific ways in which a voiceless image can articulate meaning to students.