Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #12: Art and Inspiration

Flaming June by Sir Frederich Leighton

One of the great events of my life (and by this you will get to see what a geek I am) was visiting the Tate Museum in London. Art I had seen in glossy picture books, in encyclopedia articles, and on the internet, was suddenly there before me in all its glory. When I say that, I don't simply mean it was glorious and beautiful, though it was. The color and texture of a painting can never be fully expressed in a reproduction, no matter how good the photography or dense the pixel matrix might be. An example I saw was Frederic Leighton's painting, Flaming June. I had seen posters of it. A friend of mine has a reproduction of the work in his living room. But when I looked on the work itself, amazement struck me. The colors knocked my eyes out! It glowed and radiated color. No copy I had beheld came even a little close to conveying the richness of the painting from 1895.
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It inspired me so much that, a couple of days later, on the flight back from England, I began writing.

I have a particular gift that I can write most anywhere and at any time when I have an idea. Author Louis L'Amour once said he could write on a bus or train or in the middle of Times Square. I can do that as well. Distractions don't bother me. In fact, they help. My brain welcomes minor distractions, background sounds, and "grey noise." One of my friends clarified it for me once when she said she liked to write and plan in public places where there is background noise because, "I have monkeys running around in my head. If the monkeys have something to listen to, they quiet down." I began writing on the airplane.

I write in longhand. Sitting next to my dear and loving wife, on that eight-hour flight from Heathrow to Pearson International Airport in Toronto, I began writing a story about Sossity walking through a small private museum and running into the ghost of Jemima Martindale, a woman artist from the 1700s, little known, who did capable art and ended up committing suicide. Sossity is intrigued. She later meets Jemima at the Tate and learns her story. She wanted to paint, her husband forbade her. Eventually, she went to Saint Ives, England, learned to paint, and also got pregnant. She has the child, but after her husband kills her lover in duel, she hangs herself.

Saint Ives, England

Sossity goes to a museum in Saint Ives and meets Rosie, a docent studying to be a painter who gives tours of the museum. They find a painting, Andromeda, by Jemima Martindale. Sossity discovers, to her chagrin, that it has been sold. But she feels something there she must investigate. She talks Rosie into letting her into the museum at night. Jemima appears and instructs Sossity to remove a board on the back of the frame. Behind the painting are Jemima's drawings and her journal as well. She also learns Rosie is a descendent of the son Jemima had out of wedlock. Sossity takes the documents.

She wanted to buy the painting, but since a German art dealer has already closed the deal on it, she is stymied in this. Jemima comes to the rescues, haunts and torments him, until he asks to get out of the contract. Sossity buys the painting. She also arranges to have Jemima's diary published. At the same time, a historian discovers the diary of the doctor who did the autopsy on Jemima Martindale and who was bribed by her husband to cover up the truth. He reveals it was a suicide. The two documents spark interest in Jemima and her art. Soon she is the focus of study and re-evaluation. Her work is saved from obscurity by this. Sossity keeps the painting in her home and, when she looks at it, feels the influence of Jemima, who has finally gone on her rest and her reward.

Art can inspire. In fact, art has inspired me as much as reading has. Poet Scott Cairns once remarked that he often gets ideas for poems by reading theological books or lives of the saints. He once quipped that someday he'll actually finish one of those books without the interruption of inspiration for a poem during the reading. I feel the same way about art. I always carry a moleskin when I got to a museum. Ideas for poems or stories inevitably following looking at art.

Many things can provide ideas for stories. Reading is the most common thing. Walking in nature is another. Art, a visual medium, can do the same. But I've found it doesn't work as a source of ideas, inspiration, or as a starting point, when viewed online or in a book. You have to be there. You need to see the vitality the artist put into the work. Then it comes alive. 

Has art ever inspired you to write a poem or a story?

Do you think viewing art is a pathway to creation of other works of art?

Is printed art or art reproduced on line equal to the actual work of art?  What is your experience in this?

The story appeared in the journal, Monday Night, still in print.  Here a link to it. I think it's a pretty good tale--for being written on an airplane crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

For more books on art, love, and the supernatural check out my Writer's Page.