Pictures paint words and you can extract the story behind the lines and colors that you see. Here’s how a photograph or a painting can break writer’s block.

Rilke did it when he saw a sculpture of Apollo. Keats did it when he noticed an urn. Tracy Chevalier did it upon seeing Vermeer’s portrait of a girl with an earring. And you can do it too: translate a visual work of art into your next literary piece.

Go to a museum or art gallery then focus on one painting or photo. Or open a book of artwork or download one from the Internet (make sure it a clear, clean image). Get your journal/ a bit of paper and pen. Then start:

First, list down what you actually see: the colors, the buildings, the people. What are they wearing? What patterns in the clothes? What poses do the people hold -standing, sitting, looking up? Are there dark lines? Smudges? Is the work damaged?

Keep listing down everything you see. Then start thinking of the story in the image? Where is it taking place? Is it busy or quiet? What time of the day is it in the image? Who are the people there? What are their relationships with each other?

Or perhaps there’s a story behind the making of this artwork. Who is the artist? When was this created? What are the circumstances surrounding it?
Keep building the story up. Focus on the emotions it brings out in you. Does it make you happy? Sad? Does it remind you of something in your own life? Is there lacking? Is it causing you to look for something that isn’t there?

You’ll hit on an idea after a while. A light will turn on. This is your poem/story. Flesh it out until it stops bugging you. Rest then edit.

I once saw a sketch by the artist Kathe Kollwitz’s sketch “Brot!” I decided to write a poem about it and this is what came out after focusing on it and relentlessly editing it:

Feeding

She stands between two children;
One pleading, the other struggling.
Both clutching her skirt
As if it was the anchor.

Hand on his mouth,
She pacifies the wailing and anger
That twisted his face.
She will not hear more of this.

Hand on her face,
She looks down to the other one’s
Round eyes anticipating tears.
She will not see more of this.

Maybe God, too, rolled up His sleeves
As He silenced the pangs of hunger
And fed the littlest of His children.

This is the artwork:

Art is one of the many writing prompts available to writers. They provide us with metaphors and a new way of experiencing and writing about life.