{"id":17652,"date":"2019-04-10T19:22:49","date_gmt":"2019-04-10T19:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/?p=17652"},"modified":"2025-06-15T17:51:42","modified_gmt":"2025-06-15T16:51:42","slug":"the-eternal-smile-how-words-inspire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/the-eternal-smile-how-words-inspire\/","title":{"rendered":"The Eternal Smile: How words inspire…"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are plenty of overlaps between art forms… particularly between literature and visual art, and as it’s National Poetry Month – yes, there is such a thing (!) <\/em>and as this influence often goes unseen… I wanted to shine a light on the many ways in which words inspire our artists.<\/p>\n

For Toni Cogdell, poetry is fundamental to her practice. \u2018Murmuration\u2019 was particularly significant as the first piece she explicitly incorporated text within. I love the title – like the murmuration formed by starlings in the sky and mumured whispers – the words emerge and disappear within the painting.<\/p>\n

Stephen Todd<\/a> found inspiration from T.S. Elliot\u2019s Hollow Men and that feeling there is a gap between self and perceived reality. The symbolism of the ferry boat \u201chas the purpose of passing between the two places and all the classical references that go with that..\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Isaac Aldridge takes direct inspiration from the structure of William Burroughs\u2019 \u2018cut-up\u2019 style of poetry – creating paintings in a similar style. Sometimes he literally cuts things up and applies them to the canvas and other times working with multiple visual sources and combines them compositionally using a fragmented \u2018cut-up\u2019 approach.<\/p>\n

Peter Evans is massively interested in poetry (and a published poet) with the Tate including in their library section a book of quotes about the weather, which he sourced from various postcards. Interestingly a lot of his work is created in response to overheard comments or phrases \u2013 sometimes using these as the title of the work.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost as if the corner of the room has overheard and noted down the comment \u2013 planes of abstracted colour meeting at angles with poetic titles hinting at the passing conversation: “He’s Buying a House There”. “What, to Live in?\u201d & \u201cDoesn’t Even Feel Like We’ve Been Away\u201d.<\/p>\n

Iain Andrews
\n..My temptation of St Anthony series are all based around Flaubert’s play of the same name – also the Eliot poem ‘Little Gidding’ that includes the lines ‘the end is where we start from’ is something I consider a lot when I make the drawings, based as they are on Faery stories and pre exisiting myths – there is a working backwards going on , a re-inventing of the story or a retelling of of it.<\/em><\/p>\n

More ambiguously, Glib Franko<\/a>, in the manner of Cy Twombly, has several works incorporating text which he makes deliberately unreadable in form with gestural, overlapping strokes of paint.<\/p>\n

And perhaps my favourite, the influence of the book The Eternal Smile by Swedish writer Par Lagerkvist, can be seen underpinning much of Birgitte Lykke Madsen’s work \u2013 particularly in her subject of groups gathering to talk. In the novel, small and bigger crowds gather after death \u201cto tell each other stories in the darkness, seeking the answer of life… slowly coming to realise that their community IS the meaning of life.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

To see additional & extended responses from artists to the question of how words inspired their work – &\u00a0I\u2019m so glad I asked the question (!) <\/em>see below:<\/p>\n

Toni Cogdell<\/strong>
\nPoetry and the written word have always held magic for me; a powerful form of expression and connection, a way to unveil thought and emotion giving it a physical life on the page. Another way to paint perhaps. Another channel and well of creative substance impossible for me to resist.<\/em><\/p>\n

For as long as I’ve made visual art I’ve written, and read, and felt such a union between them. For me words and paintings chip away at the same rock, both carving out the space I’m looking to create. I want them to coexist on the same canvas, the same page, yet without the relationship words and images usually have, that of illustration or straightforward storytelling. Just something that is uniquely theirs, two art forms searching for a truth.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s only been in the past year or so that this has succinctly been happening, naturally and without doubt. As my painting attempts to merge boundaries between the figurative and abstract, exploring our inner and outer realities; words have become a kind of bridge, marks and clues that open up the space a little more. Fuelled by and containing poetry, my ongoing Ambition Bird series began in response to the poem Ambition Bird by Anne Sexton. That poem seized me with an unsettling recognition and connections between my work, words and images began to be made. Sexton’s Ambition Bird is a creature all Creatives can recognise. It rages, flaps and flits in her mind and body, through the days and nights, a fury and joy willing itself to form and be seen. A deep-seated need, in spite of all sense and folly, to create, make art, give expression to her voice. Poetry, words and paint are ultimately about ‘voice’. Our truths and contradictions endlessly looking for light, needing to be released from us in some way in order for us to find our place in the world we live in. The fingerprint in thought waves and breaths that reveals us, expresses our uniqueness and in doing so becomes a beacon for like minds and matter. In moments of recognition we come alive. We thirst for these moments. Art extends those moments and for me, words and paintings enter into a ceaseless dialogue with each other in that space of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’.<\/em><\/p>\n

From ‘Ambition Bird’ I began to find poem after poem, especially by women writers, that contained echoes of the Ambition Bird and the importance of voice and expression along with the perils of the unexpressed and unheard voice. Thinking of all the repressed and denied voices throughout history and right now, I have so much awe and respect for those women artists who made poetry, writing and paintings in a patriarchal society that held no space for them, having to fight and work twice as hard to make their voice heard, paving the way for future artists to own a little more creative ground on which to stand. These thoughts have become my Letters to A Poet series: works on paper alongside my Ambition Bird series that represent an infinite conversation back through time to our artist ancestors, connected now in this time through our work, our joined creative yearning. The series references R. M Rilke’s and Virginia Woolf’s essays \/ collections ‘Letters to a Young Poet’, reminders that we all enter the same stream on the way to expression and while working alone we are always interlinked, allowing each other to step further into the unknown.<\/em><\/p>\n

Poems have become bedrock for my paintings and my own writing, collaged as text on the canvas or scrawled on the surface of paint, hidden or revealed as our own voices are. Much of the text ends up illegible and more as another mark made, yet as handwriting we recognise it symbolically along with its suggestion to us about streams of thought and communication, voices and meanings. Some words show more clearly, giving a clue and marker to the journey of the painting. Which words remain through the layers of paint once the artwork is complete is a chance result of word-divination, and this process is a wonderful journey of its own.<\/em><\/p>\n

Myka Baum:<\/strong>
\nPoem by the artist:<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Travelling through the tunnels of the Victoria line – seated wearing my commuter amour gear<\/p>\n

noise cancelling headphones blaring out music I don\u2019t want to hear to stop the voices
\nroaring between my ears<\/p>\n

shades
\nto soften the glaring light to protect me
\nfrom any contact with their eyes<\/p>\n

a book
\nto shield me
\nfrom the spears flying from their eyes the nauseating stench
\nthe red-rimmed holes
\nthat want to swallow me up – ALIVE<\/p>\n

a hood
\nconnected to a phantom blanked – with spikes to protect me
\nto keep me apart
\nto vanish
\ninto the dark<\/p>\n

I brace myself
\nto battle the swarming crowds in the tunnels of Finsbury Park<\/p>\n

Eventually untangling, they fall in line The pain softens – I SIGH<\/p>\n

The misty rain is softly falling on my face My eyes adjusting to the gentle fading light I walk the backstreets<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

sinking my feet into the ground<\/p>\n

I feel the wet air on my face
\nI breathe, I smell, I see
\nI try – to be
\nI release my blanket – And I SIGH!<\/p>\n

I reach the traffic
\nI cross the lights
\nI enter through the double gates – open wide<\/p>\n

St Mellitus, a mighty church like a roman temple with four pillars
\nand lots of stairs<\/p>\n

the paving stones shimmering in the dark measure 84 steps long and on average 8 steps wide<\/p>\n

thanks to neglect
\nthere are lots of cracks
\nfrom which on a damp dark night more than 400 worms come into sight<\/p>\n

they stretch out far profoundly angular<\/p>\n

I tiptoe around
\nand have to take great care not only to not step on cracks but nowhere near in fact.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Wayne Sleeth:<\/strong>
\nMy Westminster\/Financial Times paintings are all bound to a book of haiku l had published last year ( Financial Times) by Sampson Low Ltd (London) on the theme, still available too on amazon, and with the Br…word being hot as it is, I’m creating a mini-buzz even though I’m back in france. I’ve never really promoted the fact that l\u2019ve had poems published since l was 18..<\/em><\/p>\n

Birgitte Lykke Madsen:<\/strong>
\nThe swedish author\/poet\u00a0Per Lagerquist has written a beautiful and existencial novel called Det Evige Smil (The Eternal Smile, I guess), \u00a0Where smal or bigger crowds gather after death and tell each stories in darkness. This silence – and eternity – that is their situation in common makes them seek for the answer of Life and they go to ask God. On their way they slowly realize that their community IS the meaning of Life.\u00a0This silence in the novel and the way people gather and talk is over and over my inspiration in my paintings.<\/em><\/p>\n

Heather Gen<\/a>tleman:<\/a><\/strong>
\nMy work is narrative in nature, finding inspiration in literature and symbolism. I approach my work primarily through painting and drawing, but I also work in sculpture, video, writing, interactive installation, audio and performance. I choose to layer media when it enhances the telling of the story by allowing the viewer a fuller comprehension of the layers of meaning in the work.<\/em><\/p>\n

A Familiar Solitude Installation is based on a poem of mine of the same name. A lone woman kneels with her back to the opening of a cave. Inside the cave the woman has shed the constrictions of social scripts. Within the comfort and the confines of the cave she has entered the realm of possibilities within her own psyche. Carl Jung believed caves could be interpreted as passageways to an underworld where manifestation of the unconscious is realized and memories reside. She and the cave become one entity : the rocks and formations change into biomorphic viscera and her body becomes rock-like. The painting has a totem like quality that functions as an installation which deals with the conscious and unconscious, the body and architecture, and space and memoir. Some of the under-painting is left untouched, to create a relationship between the conceptual space of potentiality and the experience of the present moment, and the physical space between the looseness of the sketch and the finished areas.<\/em><\/p>\n

The cave as a place of potentiality is explored further by the installation composed of clothes in the form of a cave. The clothes in the installation are aspects of her narrative. They are layered, each one different and unique; metaphors for the layers of her life experiences. Sewn to layers of clothes are bits of cloth embedded with stanzas of the poem, \u201cA Familiar Solitude\u201d. Each is separate, like a unit of time. Attached to each stanza is a rock, which also marks the passage of time as each one has become progressively smaller due to exposure to the elements. Each stanza, as part of a poem, can be read sequentially, but doesn’t need to be. Because the poem is sewn into the clothes in a random manner, it can be read any way the viewer chooses. The poem speaks of isolation and hopelessness as well as a sense of hope for the future.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A Familiar Solitude
\nIt is a familiar solitude
\nA time for whisperings
\nHer mouth forms a cry
\nAn agony of existence, a lamp in the abyss
\nLife wrenched out of the murky chaos
\nCan she hear that her voice is smothered?
\nHer hand writes on the walls : death, life, tears
\nHer finger brushes it aside
\nNothing shudders
\nHer mouth forms a whisper
\nRiparare la sua casa
\nHer house is in ruins
\nHer songs are silent
\nHer mind is cloistered
\nShe follows a child who is thirsty, down winding streets
\nHer furrow deepens
\nHer mouth is dry
\nA mosaic of a childhood lost placed in a glass jar is carried through the streets
\nHe is covered in mud
\nWhat door should she knock at?
\nThe cowed guide her
\nHer ruined lover
\nHer lost childhood
\nHer severed hands
\nHer phantom limbs
\nVesica Pisces
\nUnder the ceiling of oblivion she enters a cave
\nShe has pawned her last song
\nHer body in tatters
\nShe tightens the noose of lonely solitudes
\nAnd remembers the silence of her squandered songs
\nDeep in the mud
\nHer hands, her holy sacredness plant a seed
\nA thick husk
\nIts lips in the earth
\nThe blackness of the soil joining the threads of her hands
\nTerra sustenance : beauty, dark truth emerges
\nOne in the darkness
\nCreated in the blacknessa
\nThe shine of the abyss
\nThe space in which it stands
\nThe destiny of the seed
\nShe places her silver glove in butterfly wings<\/p>\n

Sonja de Graaf<\/strong>
\nMy titles are often exerpts from Virginia Woolf’s books, songs or other literature.<\/em><\/p>\n

Grant McGregor:<\/strong>
\n<\/em>Jean Paul Sartre has been a key influence in my work. Particularly his philosophy book “Being and Nothingness”. This quote especially represents my own thinking<\/em><\/p>\n

“We have to deal with human reality as a being which is what it is not and which is not what it is.”<\/em><\/p>\n

For me this quote is all about being stuck in life. Trapped in a circle of responsibility and the dream. Everything caught up in a state of continuous unbecoming.<\/em><\/p>\n

Stephen Todd:<\/a><\/strong>
\nWords are an vital part of my work, from a source of inspiration and the titling of work, to the use of text and phrases within the paintings themselves as a source of mark making.<\/em><\/p>\n

My painting \u201cFalls a Shadow\u201d \u00a0https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/artwork\/falls-a-shadow-humber-estuary-by-stephen-todd<\/a>\u00a0 is informed by T S Eliot\u2019s\u00a0Hollow Men\u00a0and\u00a0that feeling there is a gap between yourself and a perceived reality. The ferry boat has purpose of passing between these two places, and all the classical references that go with that…..<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cBetween the idea<\/em>
\nAnd the reality<\/em>
\nBetween the motion<\/em>
\nAnd the act<\/em>
\nFalls the Shadow\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Isaac Aldridge:
\n<\/strong>A lot of my work has a close relation to\u00a0poetry. I am very attached to William Burroughs and his \u2018cut-up\u2019 style of\u00a0poetry. My paintings are completed with a similar cut-up technique, sometimes literally cut up and stuck onto canvas, other times taking multiple preliminary sources and combining them with the cut-up technique. I am fascinated by the correlation between language and visuals, often language stimulates the work and vice versa.<\/em><\/p>\n

I am very connected to writing and often use\u00a0poetry\u00a0as part of the process in painting, I find it is very helpful when considering the visual language that is being used and whether or not imagery and colours are effective.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes even use the cut-up style of writing to name my work.<\/em><\/p>\n

A bit of an insight into my process that normally goes unseen and is why a painting is such an emotional battle, with the physical application of the paint and mental critiques through the building and reworking of an image.<\/em><\/p>\n

Grant McGregor:<\/strong>
\n<\/em>Jean Paul Sartre has been a key influence in my work. Particularly his philosophy book “Being and Nothingness”. This quote especially represents my own thinking<\/em><\/p>\n

“We have to deal with human reality as a being which is what it is not and which is not what it is.”<\/em><\/p>\n

For me this quote is all about being stuck in life. Trapped in a circle of responsibility and the dream. Everything caught up in a state of continuous unbecoming.\u00a0\u201c<\/em><\/p>\n

Peter Evans:<\/strong>
\n\u201cI’m big into\u00a0poetry, I recently had a\u00a0poem\u00a0published in the New River Press yearbook and it’s a part of my practice.<\/p>\n

For the work I have on NBA the abstract room corner paintings are most of the time presented with overheard comments or phrases, sometimes these I use as the titles of the work. Almost like the corner of the room (the Painting) has overheard and noted down the comment.<\/p>\n

Not sure if this is really\u00a0poetry\u00a0but I love to try and include text in my work wherever I can. I have a book of quotes taken from postcards all about the weather too which the Tate included in their library collection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jan Valik:<\/strong>
\n\u2018We perceive sooner than we understand\u2026 The line is perceiving the ink, the ink is perceiving the brush, the brush is perceiving the wrist, the wrist is perceiving the soul\u2026\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Shitao (1642 – 1707), Enlightening Remarks on Painting<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cFill your paper with the breathings of your heart.\u201d –\u00a0William Wordsworth<\/em><\/p>\n

In an age of\u00a0 fragmention of awareness that has lost its sense of wholeness, I strive to portray the ineffable. Fluidity of perception among imagination, recollection and landscape share for me the same roots as the poetry of John Keats in its certain contemplative aspects as well as those of William Wordsworth. The complex rapture between nature an culture not excluding subjective and spiritual reflections remains utterly important even in our contemporary times.<\/em><\/p>\n

My work is in its core inspired indirectly also by poetry of Japanese and Chinese authors, Matsuo Basho and Shitao respectively (to name but a few). The sensitivity and minute observations of nature and landscape with which they bridge the subjective and imaginative atmosphere inspires me in my own exploration and contemplation of the art of painting.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are plenty of overlaps between art forms… particularly between literature and visual art, and as it’s National Poetry Month – yes, there is such a thing (!) and as this influence often goes unseen… I wanted to shine a light on the many ways in which words inspire our artists. For Toni Cogdell, poetry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[542],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dispatches-from-the-field"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17652"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28509,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17652\/revisions\/28509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}