Mixed media: Moving between painting and writing

Abstract

This paper describes and critically reflects upon an experiment I conducted into the creative possibilities resulting from a process of moving back and forth between two expressive media - writing and painting. In essence, it documents how, in response to my interest in visual and narrative representation, and the area of Critical Animal Studies, I selected two paintings: George Stubbs' 'A Horse Frightened by a Lion' (1770) and John Constable's 'The Hay Wain' (1821), and brought these together, first in a painting of my own, and then in a short prose narrative. This process was in part inspired by aspects of 'Textual Intervention: Critical and Creative Strategies for Literary Studies' (1994), in which Rob Pope discusses creative written 'interventions' into an existing prose text as allowing for a greater engagement with that 'original' text. The process presented by Pope involves deciding, 'how far you are prepared to write 'with', 'against' or 'across the grain' of what seem to be that text's dominant preoccupations and major strategies' (Pope 1994: 2). In the case of my intervention into the two 'original' paintings, I discuss the quite conscious elements of subversion introduced in my painting, and in the additional prose narrative that emerged from that process.