Notebooking Daily Writing Exercise April 15, 2015

Daily Exercise Genre: Ekphrasis.

With You by Andre Kohn

Ekphrasis is from Greek meaning the description of a work of art as a rhetorical device. That's actually pretty straight forward, but another way to look at it, is it's highfalutin fan fiction, usually about paintings or pieces of music, but it can be about virtually anything.


Today's artwork is...


With You by Andre Kohn


One of the things I really like about this painting is that it looks almost as if the scene is happening within the paint, as opposed to on the surface of the canvas. The texture of the paint works tremendously with the wet nature of the scene. I also really like the vague figures farther back in the scene, the couple also with an umbrella, the solo person with an umbrella, and the two without. The two individuals without umbrellas is especially interesting: why don't they have umbrellas? Why are they out in the rain? But also, the couple right in front also begs for a narrative. Many options to translate aspects of the painting into a story or poem.