Not being convinced that art is therapy, I will again turn my mind to the study of ekphrasis.

Ekphrasis – representing a work of art in a literary language – makes explicit the connection between visual art and literature. So lets start with a little excerpt from an interview Kevin McNeilly made with the Canadian author Anne Carson

KM: Do you conceive your work in any visual sense?

AC: Oh always; I mostly think of my work as a painting.

KM: Ut pictura poesis?

AC: No, not capturing what’s out the window. But making it like what Mallarmé talks about, using words so that you create a surface that leaves an impression in the mind no matter what the words mean. It’s not about the meaning of each individual word adding up to a proposition; it’s about the way they interact with each other as daubs of meaning, you know as impressionist…