Red Dress by Tatyana Ostapenko
Last week I participated in SPARK, an internet event in which visual artists and writers share their work to inspire new work. My partner Tatyana Ostapenko sent me the painting above. Over the next ten days I wrote my poem in response. My goal wasn’t to illustrate the painting but to allow it to spark my own creative journey. At the same time I sent my poem “Frog Woman” to Tatyana to inspire a new painting by her.
My favorite part of the process was opening Tatyana’s painting. I had absolutely no idea what I would see. I was immediately captivated by the little girl in her red dress, standing just in front of a deep, dangerous chasm and then far in the distance, a beautiful forest. As I sat down to write I drew on these experiences—sometimes feeling the need to own a piece of clothing as if it were somehow already mine, the innocent joy of Little Red Riding Hood as she set off into the woods, my father’s last days which he spent looking out the window at a beautiful field and forest, and, of course, my relationship with my mother.
SPARK happens four times a year, each time with more participants. For more information and to see more inspired art, go to the SPARK website.
To see more of Tatyana’s art, please go to her website or to her flickr gallery.
Finally, to enjoy more Poetry Friday go to Jama Rattigan’s Alphabet Soup.
(c) 2012 Elizabeth Ehrenfest Steinglass, all rights reserved