The old chestnut may be true: Every picture tells a story, or maybe it's worth a thousand words. Regarding art, abstractions might be cool as an ice cold martini but art that tells a story--figurative, representational or narrative art--is often looked down upon by purists as mere illustration. Too bad. In a way, all art is narrative to a degree, and even the most abstract painting communicates something in the same way that music, without words, communicates mood, emotion, rhythm, timbre, beat, melody. Something comes across. Making art is a balance between daydreaming and problem-solving, and the same is true in telling a story. In both cases there is a brainstorming session, penciling an outline, scumbling the surface to see what might emerge, constructing an underlying skeleton, and finally standing back and seeing what happened. Creative works are coaxed into the light. After a while one begins to recognize the "process," patterns and milestones. You wave at the guardians at the gate. I finished a short story this morning and sent it on its way. If you'd like to see a story I published a while back in the Seattle Weekly, that they still have online and to read it, follow this LINK.
