Art in the Balance

How art genres inform each other

Marsh Walk. Photo by the author

For the last few years, I’ve been following the advice of a former writing teacher, who recommended exploring different fine-arts genres in order to inform our main one.

I’m a fiction writer, so I wanted to discover what effects creating visual art would have on my writing. Since the only visual creations I’ve delved into have been gardening, landscaping and textile arts, I decided to try my hand at photography, paints, inks, glues, and colorful papers. I’m discovering that visual art principles do translate to writing.

For example, to be interesting, a photograph needs depth. In writing, a story needs depth, also — shadows, bright spots, objects near and clear or hazy and far away. The better we know the back story, even though we only allude to it, the more depth our piece will have.

Warm color study. Ink and acrylic on multi-media paper. Photo by the author

We see the principle of texture in the layers of collage, or the technique of combing, stenciling, or scraping a painting. Some painters add texture by building up layers of paint, or adding grainy elements like sand. Likewise, a story can be textured in many ways. Its characters can be grizzled, kindly, reserved, long-suffering. The landscape can be harsh, lush, or relentlessly unchanging. Actions can be erratic and surprising.

Repetition in visual arts, such as the echo of geometric forms, including rectangles that reiterate the shape of the canvas itself, help us to respond subliminally to a painting. Writers rely on repetition for foreshadowing, or to strengthen a motif. Fairy tales have always used repetition of threes for emphasis, from characters, to wishes, to bowls of porridge.

Balance usually means a visual piece has focal points that lead the eye from one place to another without causing an abrupt halt. This creates a feeling of satisfaction or completion. Balance in a story means that something unsettling will need a period of equilibrium. If there’s an argument, the story will need some kind of resolution. If there’s evil or horror, there must also be hope or humor or justice. As a writer, I know it’s bad form to make a villain one-dimensional. The protagonist can’t be perfect and the antagonist can’t be a total villain. They both need human frailties.

The tone or value in a piece provides its atmospheric elements, like ponderousness or joy. Writing does this through word choice, sentence length, phrasing, even humor.

“Tangle” beginner calligraphy practice. Micron pen on multi-media paper. Photo by the author

Striving to create successful visual art also helps me to appreciate techniques in the art of others. I suddenly understand the choices of painters, filmmakers, even musicians. A roiling sea in a landscape, the change in the key of a musical passage, the camera angle, or darkness and light in a film, all contribute to the tension, emphasis, and pacing necessary for a finished product. (One nugget I’ve discovered — and recommend — is to watch a successful film using the “director’s commentary” setting. It’s a fascinating look, scene by scene, at what artistic decisions the director, production crew, composer and actors made, and why.) If I really study what makes other art forms successful, I can use them to deepen my own work.

I’ll never flourish as a visual artist. I need a lighter touch, as I tend to overwork a piece. It’s also a challenge for me to translate what’s in my mind’s eye onto a substrate. I’m getting better at it, but my writing will always be stronger than my visual creations.

I’m grateful to my former writing teacher for recommending trying other art forms. There is cross-genre pollination, a universality, in artistic techniques. These are the necessary underpinnings— although not always apparent — that strengthen our pieces. They make our work dimensional and interesting. They make our work “work.”

Kris Heim is a baby-boomer with a past: teacher, gardener, crafter, writer, traveler. She recently downsized by half and is trying to organize the mess.


Art in the Balance was originally published in The Writing Cooperative on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Author: Kris Heim