Ekphrastic Writing: Creative Writing Based Off of Art

One of the many photos I’ve taken that have inspired me lately.

In terms of inspiration, art is a valid source to look for in our writing practices.

Often, when writing poems, stories, and other various genres (looking to you, hybrid works), we don’t realize that we can use art as a source of inspiration. Obviously, we cannot claim the ideas of the artists as our own, but we can create something that tangent to to it, a dialogue that spans are decades, centuries, and spaces. The ekphrastic is a unique form because we’re taking something that’s already there and creating something completely new from it.

Here’s a breakdown of what ekphrastic actually is, and how you can use it within a multitude of genres. Let’s get right into it!

The Ekphrastic Written Work

I’m going to advise you to use the word “poem” in this section rather loosely, as personally, I don’t believe in rigid genre rules or structures. Rules are really meant to be broken, in my opinion—except the law. Don’t break the law, that can have serious consequences in actuality. These works of writing can be lush and vivid, as you already have an idea already based on the artwork that you’re looking at.

I say ekphrastic poem because often an ekphrastic poetry is considered to be its own little genre and medium, and it often isn’t applied to works of prose. The word ekphrastic quite literally means to provide commentary on a visual work, whether it be poetry or another medium. So, in a nutshell, ekphrastic works create dialogue with the art that you’re consuming, or are spinning off it inspiration-wise.

Your ekphrastic works don’t really need to directly and only be about the work of art you’re using as reference. You can spin this any direction you like, but if you’re going off of the original artwork, please include an “after [ARTIST NAME, TITLE OF WORK]” directly below the title of your piece of writing. Especially if you’re writing a scene based off of what’s in the painting, then you are claiming someone else’s idea as their own. And that really isn’t okay.

This is a really old form; it originated with Plato, back in ancient Greece. In his writings, he describes it as taking a form of something already there, like an intangible object, and using intellectual thought and brainpower to concoct something new out of it. By the time Aristotle came around, this was a very real logical school of thought.

Something that changed it up throughout history was that it was “form” to them and then became known as an official term: “ekphrastic.” In literature, during the Renaissance and Baroque eras, we really saw this flourishing as medium in art. Many, many writers referenced paintings their contemporaries were making at the time and creating works around them, which is an interesting phenomenon. Then, throughout history, we saw this form emerging again and again.

Examples of Ekphrastic Poetry

Here are some of my favorite works that are technically falling under the ekphrastic label:

“Two Nudes,” by Mary Jo Bang, published in Poetry

“El Patio de Mi Casa” by Orland Ricardo Menes in Poetry

“Last Meal: Breakfast Tacos, San Antonio, Tejas” by Laurie Ann Gurrerro

Examples of Ekphrastic Prose

The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde, although it is about a fictional painting. We often see plots around fictional paintings in prose.

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Again, a fictional painting of Christ is used as a plot point.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

Details, Details, Details

At the end of the day, you really can spin your story or poem off of the most insignificant details of a poem. For example, I recently wrote a poem about Stephen Slaughter’s painting Two Women Gathering Fruit (1750). I specifically saw this painting originally on the FIT Fashion History Timeline, so there was an in-depth analysis of the clothes the two women were adorned in. I would not have known that the Black woman in the piece was definitely of a higher status because of the jewels and Turkish turban she was wearing, nor that there was a deeper racial context in the fact she was wearing a Turkish turban. Her hand on the other woman I deemed to be quite suggestive, so I ended up writing a super gay poem focusing on the clothes and attire the woman are wearing.

Art is all about the little detaisl coming together to tell a story. Look and examine all of, say, a painting, for the deepest analysis you can give it. Look other professional thoughts and critiques about the painting, perhaps the backstory of the artist. There’s so much digging you can do that adds layers of deeper inspiration. This also makes a stronger ekphrastic piece, too, at the end of the day, because you’re sitting down and really understanding what makes a painting tick and how to emulate that in your own writing.

I hope this post was quite helpful! Happy writing!