Art inspired winners

This challenge was set to demonstrate how art can move us, inspire us, and help us to come up with the ideas we all need to help us with our creative writing work. If nothing else, I hope that this exercise demonstrates how we can all be inspired by art. If you ever find yourself short of an idea for a story, why not try looking at a painting, a sculpture, a photograph, or even visiting an art gallery? Choose a picture, any picture and just look at it for a few minutes, allow yourself to be absorbed by what you can see. Imagine what the artist was feeling when they created the work and imagine yourself as a part of the picture. I can pretty much guarantee that, after just those few minutes, you will have some new ideas to write about.

Art inspires challenge and full entry details

All the challenge asked was for entrants to write a poem, short story, flash fiction, or critique of a certain artwork. The artist, Eileen Cooper RA, is particularly well known as a print maker. The above image is from a monoprint (a single edition print) that was hand finished by the artist with the addition of a painted bird.

The entries

Please read the following wonderful works, which provide a unique vision of how different writers have interpreted the work.

Woman and Cat by Mark Graham

Cat, Woman, Bird by Sarah Parker

A Scent of Jasmine in the Evening Air by John Cox

Feline In A Dream by 🌟 Mike Singleton 🌟 Mikeydred 🌟

Crux of the Night by Cindy Calder

One of Us is Dreaming by Dana Crandell

The Honesty of EileenCooper by Shirley Belk

Art Beyond Permission—Understanding by Paul Stuart

Sandman by L.C. Schäfer

Feline folly by Antoni De'Leon

Desert Of Sky by Laura Pruett

Thank you to each of the above writers for joining in this exercise and providing us with their unique understanding and appreciation of Night Jasmine Two.

For this challenge, each of the entries should be considered winners. Not only did they provide some stunning and brilliant, imaginative interpretations for readers, they also had the opportunity to explore how art can inspire their written work. Well done to all.

In order to help me assess which offering ought to win the cash prize, I first established some informal criteria:

Strength of the connection between story and image

Originality and freshness of the written work

How satisfying the story was to the reader

Having done that, I reread each of the stories, awarding points from one to five for each criterion. This gave me an informal score that I used to shortlist the top three submissions. When I did this, there was only a few points between the highest and least scoring entries. It did, however, give me a shortlist, allowing me to consider each of these entries in more detail. The shortlisted entries, in no particular order, were:

• Cat, Woman, Bird by Sarah Parker
• Art Beyond Permission—Understanding by Paul Stuart
• A Scent of Jasmine in the Evening Air by John Cox

Cat, Woman, Bird is a beautifully written, illustrated and charming ekphrastic poem that really draws the reader into its dreamscape. Sarah clearly took the overall themes of the picture to heart when she wrote this.

Art Beyond Permission—Understanding takes a highly original approach by blending a critical and personal analysis of the value and purpose of art, with a dreamlike, lyrical reflection on Cooper's work. To say Paul has a way with words would be a glorious understatement.

The thing I liked most about A Scent of Jasmine in the Evening Air is the way John's narrative really conjures up the scent to the point where you can pretty much smell jasmine by the end of the story. Also highly original and an intriguing story about the unusual effect that art has on the protagonist. I thought this particular story had the best ending too.

These three shortlisted entries were just too close to call. I had to reread again and, in the end, I couldn't allow such exceptional work to go without reward. I have therefore added two runner-up prizes of $5 each to Sarah and Paul, the winner by a hair's breadth being John Cox, for his remarkable story and artistic interpretation:

~ WINNER ~ A Scent of Jasmine in the Evening Air ~ WINNER ~

Congratulations to John, Paul and Sarah, and to everyone else who can without doubt regard themselves as winners. Thanks to all for joining in this challenge and for giving us all such wonderful prose and poetry to read.

The $10, and $5 tips will be remitted shortly.

Thanks to all