Monday, October 1, 2012

Words and Pictures by Susanna Taylor


Drawing is writing without words. To take a single frozen image and ask it to declare a lifetime, a memory, a moment—whoever said a picture is worth a thousand words was insane. Pictures are not meant to convey words—that’s what words are for. Pictures, drawings, sculptures are meant to reflect emotions, thoughts, that which is wordless and yet still beautiful. Art is that which stirs the soul and conquers the heart. Can words do this? Absolutely. But there is something that an image gives that words cannot, how the tilt of the head, the curve of the lips, the grace of a stance can twist an image so easily from that of a pair of lovers to would-be killers. A scene, a smile, how a leaf falls from a tree…words can try to reflect these images, but a picture takes that challenge in stride and instead strives to find depth in what many call mere whimsy.
What words can accomplish alone pales when words and images create a beautiful cohesion that they could not hope to accomplish alone. What would a book be like with just pictures? What would a gallery be like with just words? We seek always to find answers—the challenge is to find the story behind an unlabeled drawing, to draw the art of a glorious phrase.

“The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her to the flies.”
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

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