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Four Reasons Why Visual Art & Storytelling Are The Perfect Pair

The worlds of visual arts and spoken word aren’t always an automatic pairing in many people’s minds. But often when they are paired together, something powerful happens.


Think about a time when you looked at a painting, and it illicited a story that you leaned over and told to someone else. You saw an image and your imagination clicked on.


Or, think about a time when someone told you a story- fiction or non-fiction- and it inspired a scribble or a sketch or a painting.


Orrrr… think about the world of kids’ art making. Characters and settings fill the pages, and a story answer is often given to, “Tell me about this picture”.


So, why are these two art forms such powerful combination?


Before reading on —> did you know I created a podcast that blends these two art forms together?? It’s called The Fairy Tale Art Cart: A Draw-Along Podcast for Story Fans Who Love to Make Art and it launches Friday July 12th on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!




A cut out picture of storyteller Rachael Harrington is in the center of a bright pink and purple background. Above is the title of a new podcast called The Fairy Tale Art Cart
The Fairy Tale Art Cart is a podcast that weaves together art and storytelling (and music, too!)

Imagination On

When you create a painting or drawing, you imagine images, colors and forms in your head. Even if you are following a more intuitive painting style, your imagination is on and working as you follow the mood and shape of what you are creating.


In spoken-word storytelling, both he speaker and the listener are imagining the characters and the narrative action of the story that’s alive in the air. Those images are often very vivid, and easily can lead back to the page for a sketching session of what was just heard.


When you blend together these two imagination rich forms, you are building strong muscles of imagination- which is essential in creative problem solving.


Expressive Confidence

Both creating visual art and the act of telling a story aloud grow a rich vocabulary for expressing oneself, but each art form develops this skill in a slightly different way.


Visual art helps the individual artist to deeply understand and express their inner ideas, opinions, moods and creativity. This is an important skill to build because living in this crazy world requires the ability to express ones’ thoughts and emotions.


However, visual arts creation- as essential as it is- often lacks the component of live, collaborative expression that storytelling offers. Storytellers have to be able to find the right descriptive detail to speak out loud in a captioning way while at the same time receiving immediate feedback on what the impact of those expressed words are.


Opening opportunities to explore both of these art forms will build robust, well-rounded expressive confidence: a deep understanding of inner ideas that are able to flow out in an engaging presentation.


A State of Flow

Our lives are inundated with a million different ways to be interrupted. Put another way, rarely do we have the time or ability to focus down into one thing.


This state of deep focus and attention is called “flow”, and it’s an important part of being able to deeply understand or explore thoughts, ideas, and information. We need more opportunities to be in a state of flow in our lives, and practicing both visual arts and storytelling allows the creators or listeners to leave behind the pings and the interruptions and allow their brains to be fully and completely immersed in the building of a world.


Narrative Skills

If you are looking to boost literacy skills with your students or kids, look no further than telling a story and then having the kids draw out the sequence of the story! It’s so fun and so easy to do, and narrative skills will be built in a big way!



If you want an EASY and ENGAGING way to weave together storytelling and visual arts, check out The Fairy Tale Cart Cart: A Draw-Along Podcast For Story Fans Who Love to Make Art! Each episode features one folktale that has music-filled drawing breaks so that listeners get to become the illustrators of the story!

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