Play of Light – a display of darkness and illusion

Join Continuing Education Tutor, Phil Olsen, for a wintry creative writing workshop exploring the nocturnal paintings on display in Play of Light – a display of darkness and illusion.

The first part of this informal workshop will be spent in the Victoria Gallery & Museum gallery space, taking inspiration from the artworks and using them as visual prompts. The second part will involve creating some short fiction inspired by one or more of the paintings. Anton Chekhov was quoted as saying: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

A few simple writing exercises will explore incorporating high contrast (dark to enhance the light and vice versa); deliberately only showing what is needed (allowing the reader to fill in the blanks for themselves); and imagining what has just happened before – or is about to happen after – a scene depicted in one of the paintings (or what might be taking place beyond the frame).

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About the exhibition:

Using the play of light against darkness to add drama and mood has been a feature of art since the Renaissance. This small display shows a variety of ways the technique was applied by British artists of the late Georgian and Victorian eras. Some artists specialised in atmospheric moonlit scenes, which became known as nocturnes after the musical term. They can be seen as part of the Romanticism movement, a way of expressing emotions and evoking ambience through art, literature and music.

Artists featured include J.M.W. Turner, Joseph Wright of Derby, John Atkinson Grimshaw and David Roberts.

Find out more about Play of Light at the VG&M (on display in Gallery 4):

https://vgm.liverpool.ac.uk/exhibitions_events_tours/special/play_of_light/

Host or Publisher Continuing Education at the University of Liverpool