What can we study ourselves once we write creatively about an artwork? I asked myself this query during my creative writing PhD, where my focus was on writing a group of poems in response to modern and contemporary art.
While the early phase of my research involved sitting in galleries and museums, viewing images and objects within the flesh, throughout the pandemic I needed to retreat home and recalibrate how I could access these visual prompts. I made use of books and postcard reproductions of artworks and likewise looked online, using resources corresponding to Google Images and virtual gallery tours.
Lockdown had an impact on my mental health, and the poems I produced during this time went beyond straightforward descriptions of the artworks. They explored my thoughts and feelings – with the artwork aiding in uncovering parts of myself I used to be not aware of, or helping to warp or disguise personal content that may have left me feeling exposed if written about directly.
The idea of using images as a therapeutic tool has been a long-term interest of mine. When I ran creative writing workshops on the Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester Museum, I asked participants to pick out a picture or object and write something in response, incorporating facets of their very own identity or sense of place.
During lockdown, nonetheless, I used to be led to reflect not only on how art galleries and museums are sometimes inaccessible (resulting from illness or disability, for instance), but additionally how environments like this may feel intimidating or exclusionary for some people. And I reflected on the way it’s possible to nurture a love of art and creativity despite such feelings of marginalisation.
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Having also observed a shortfall in provision for mental health conditions, I desired to develop techniques that may enable individuals who don’t have prior knowledge of art history or a specific artist’s intentions to write down about issues that affect them, through the prism of an artwork.
What might we see in a late Rothko, for example? Or in J.M.W. Turner’s final and infrequently considered “unfinished” seascapes? Is there something within the obscurity or formlessness that chimes with something buried in our psyche? Perhaps trauma and depression require (at the very least at first) a picture to function a metaphor between that which is unspeakable and more direct language?
Maybe creative writing – and particularly writing that makes use of artworks – can perform this function, and even work as a precursor or complement to psychotherapy. This is a process whereby things we will’t name are dropped at light and find expression. Often when this happens, it’s healing.
So, listed below are three steps I even have found to be effective when using an artwork as a prompt to “write therapeutically”.
1. Choose your artwork
The first decision to make is your alternative of prompt. People often say a chunk of art “resonates” or “speaks” to them. See should you can allow a picture to search out you in this fashion. It doesn’t have to be an artwork in a museum or gallery – any image you’re feeling a reference to is an excellent alternative.
Then, ask yourself why it resonates with you. Does the image evoke something that you simply associate with? Is it a distorted portrait of yourself? Or is it a surface on which to project your personal reality?
2. Embrace ‘slow looking’
Next, I suggest trying the exercise of “slow looking”, where your attention is deliberately focused on the image for an prolonged time frame (say, just a few minutes). As you accomplish that, analyse the image and take a look at to note as much as possible.
This may contrast with most of our more accustomed way of looking, where we glance at a picture for just a few seconds and make a snap judgment about it – often deciding that we prefer it or we don’t. What do you see? Or what do you think that you see?
It will be useful to check out a type of “naive looking”, benefiting from your subjective and idiosyncratic perceptions (those we’ve conjured up ourselves but which others struggle to relate to). This type of attention involves looking around all the artwork, without assuming that some parts are more essential than others. Instead, attempt to treat every little thing as if it’s of equal significance (at the very least initially).
3. Try uninhibited writing
Follow your slow looking exercise with some uninhibited and uncensored writing. This can either be done while still looking, or you might decide to work out of your memory. As you’re employed, consider adopting a specific mode of writing in response to the image.
One option is to only describe what’s there. Another is to assume what you think that you see, or what may very well be occurring out of your vision within the blind field beyond the frame. And an alternative choice: how about writing from the position of considered one of the figures in the image? There are many alternatives – you may even try writing poems in regards to the artwork.
Whatever your approach, have patience and experiment with other ways of seeing and writing – especially those who run counter to our fast-paced visual culture, and might provide fresh insights into ourselves and the world.