Research...

What I've learned so far about novel writing is that, like the writing I do in my professional life, it requires a lot of research. My main female character is a painter and while I have taken many art classes in my lifetime (from photography in high school to art history in college), I feel the need to brush up on my knowledge.

Here are a few tidbits I picked up this evening...

1. FSU has an art gallery for its Master of Fine Arts students - Big Bend Contemporary - to not only display their works, but to gain experience in developing, preparing, installing and presenting exhibitions.

2. In art schools, students used to have to spend years learning to draw before they were allowed to use paint.

3. We "read" paintings the way we read words on the page - left to right.

4. Expressionists (early 20th century), such as Matisse, studied and developed Van Gogh's sense of shape and color. Cubists (also early 20th century), like Picasso, were inspired by the planes in Cezanne's work. (Loved how this seems an incarnation of how each generation takes what the previous generation did and redefines it, pushes it further...)

5. One interpretation of why Van Gogh painted the stars so large in "The Starry Night" (above) was simply that he thought they were beautiful and wanted to express his joy in looking at them. (I thought this was a very simple and clear explanation of what it means to take a subject and interpret it through painting.)

Image from Wikipedia.