Short talks to inspire writing

Lately, I have been thinking about phantoms, not ghosts or correlated phenomena, but rather the tones inside a piece of artwork or a written text that feel unexplained yet alluded to and, therefore, haunting. Phantoms are evocative because we illustrate their vacancies with our own experiences, so any connection that is drawn has an intimate setting that demands a form of personal analysis.

Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth was my first acknowledged witnessing of the phantom, and it took me years to scrutinize the layers of familiarity I attributed to that scene. Even now, when I look at it, I feel as though I am standing somewhere between the loss and regaining my composure. It is a bizarre contradiction of fixed displacement that eats and eats away at my mind until it finds a memory that unites me to work. Veracity is often found lurking within the untold, and I find this type of dense atmosphere truly fascinating. Think of the atmosphere the phantom holds inside your work.