The amazing Ekphrastic Writing workshops with Lorette Luzajic have inspired some great writing. She talks about the art, gives us prompts, and allows us space to read our works after. It’s an amazing, supportive space and open to new and old. I had personally never heard of Ekphrastic writing before I stumbled on her classes and I’m a convert.
This is a first draft of a free writing kind of story that came from the following painting. It was more of a writing exercise than a story–I haven’t titled it, even.
I can walk on water here, slide through the thin yellow trees, glide across the solid purple line of lake water. My feet don’t touch the lakebed, his brush strokes are too hard. I’m weightless over the bay, waving myself across the unmoving, unnerving expanse of what looks like water if I squint in just the right way. It’s morning or evening. The splotchy pink sky wants to tell time but without the sun to orient myself I don’t know if I’m looking east or west. The opposite shore frizzles into a mountain of purple almost the same color as the lake and it moves as I move, never getting closer, never seeming further away. Turning I squint at the slim yellow tress, at the lifeless rocks nestled between them. I’m as far away from their shore as I am from the other, I think for a moment before melting into the hues.
Finnian Burnett 