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« Writers Garret goodies (including discount tickets) | Main | Excerpt: "Names on a Map," by Benjamin Alire Sáenz: »

Burning bright at the DMA

9:51 PM Fri, Feb 29, 2008 |
Joy Tipping   E-mail   News tips

Tracy Chevalier, author of the best-selling Girl With a Pearl Earring, utterly captivated the crowd at tonight's Arts & Letters Live event at the Dallas Museum of Art, talking mostly about her latest book, Burning Bright, which uses poet-painter William Blake as a key character. About 400 fans, many clutching multiple copies of her books for the after-event signing, filled the Horchow Auditorium ... what a wonderful sight, to see that many lovers of great literature all soaking it in together.

Ms. Chevalier's talk was all-around delightful, but I was particularly taken with her "top three reasons art inspires her" list:
1) Great art has the effect of forcing her to slow down, to look at things in a more contemplative manner than our hectic society usually allows.
2) As a mostly verbal person, she enjoys the challenge of taking something nonverbal, i.e., a piece of art, and making it into something verbal via her novels.
3) Paintings give us the middle of a story, always bringing the questions of what happened just before, and just after, the scene the artist chose to depict -- and that's where her novels come in.

That's a lovely, succinct summation of what makes great art "great," and what makes Tracy Chevalier such a remarkable writer.


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