What Makes Art Beautiful?

Skipping Star ProductionsI've just returned from teaching a week long class on "Speaking Pictures: A Poetry Workshop Considering Visual Art" at Anam Cara Writers and Artists Retreat on the Beara Peninsula in the west of Ireland. One of the assignments we did together was to choose a piece of art somewhere in the retreat that was puzzling to us and write from that uncertainty. I think it worked well for most of the poets and it made me realize that writing from a question is much more natural for me than trying to write of "a thing called beauty." Why is that?

On another day, our group took a field trip to two local galleries looking for art that moved us. We had a line of a poem to get us started and a few ideas on how to braid the artwork into our own lives. For me, this exercise was much more of a struggle. I adored the different images of Nicola Slattery's work that we saw at Mill Cove Gallery. In fact, I think four out of five us wrote on a painting done by Slattery -- and yet because I loved her images so much, it was more difficult to write from the work.

Perhaps, however, I've found a cover artist for my next book?

Artist: Nicola Slattery