The sun isn’t always kind and white isn’t always bright….Art for Writers

White trees and white buildings connected by white walkways…but the affect is anything but light, bright or uplifting. This is the white of bone and dead things.

What we are feeling has an impact on the way we experience our environment and writers have often used the weather to express mood – just think of all those storms in horror films. That image, of course, has passed from being a cliche to being a gothic trope that signals what kind of film we are about to watch. In our own writing, it shouldn’t be a case of always matching emotion to the weather, but rather of understanding what perception does. Think of a couple in love walking in the countryside on a golden summer’s day. Now think of the same weather and the same countryside, but this time a funeral is taking place. The gold light becomes brassy and the warmth is another burden to bear.

White Trees was painted in 1922 by Anita Rée. She was a German Jewish surrealist artist who committed suicide ten years later at least in part because of the severe antisemitism she was suffering. Many of her paintings were destroyed during the Nazi era for being examples of ‘degenerate art’.

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