Connecting Art and Fiction

During February sixteenth to May twenty-fourth, five works of art from a series of ten that I recently completed will be shown at the View Point: Handmade Gallery, Bendigo in the ‘Forget Me Not’, ‘Texture’, and ‘Anatomy’ exhibitions.

Some years ago I downed tools and gave up painting to concentrate on studying the mechanics and craft of writing. Although I felt equally passionate about art and writing I found each one ate into the limited time I had for the other.

It was only recently I found that my approach to both art and fiction is the same and the work I do in each feeds into, supports and furthers the other; my starting point for each work of art, or each section of writing, is the state of mind of an individual in a situation frozen in time and conveying that state of mind.

A lot has been written about the fascinating connections between art and writing and it’s exciting for me to make the decision to allow the two to mesh by spending more time illustrating the fiction I’m working on.

This will no doubt push finishing lines into the distance but I anticipate it will also inform the process and enrich the results.

I’m currently in the early stages of putting together a series of art works that depict the state of mind of characters in a psychological novel I’ve been working on for the last eighteen months. Although I’ve often illustrated my own fiction in the form of loose sketches I’ve never completed large scale art works relating to my fiction and it’s a trip I’m looking forward to.