Textural Rhymes
Thoughts on painting and poetry
Meandering Preamble
** I was ready to write the text of this post back in March, but I was not ready to make the images until one morning last month. And then, somehow, a month later, here we are. My current focus has since shifted to newer big ideas, but these still feel relevant to share. Maybe you’ll hear about the others in another six months.
I have been steeping myself in the visual, as if my brain needed a break from words, then suddenly with one phrase, the writer part of my brain clicked back on.
Right now I’m thinking about textural rhyme.
I came across the phrase “textural rhyme” in Sam Shifton’s NYTCooking newsletter, dated 3/23/2025, and instantly fell in love with it. He uses it to describe how cubed tofu enhances the coconut curry with potatoes and greens recipe he’ll be making for his dinner. “I’d absolutely add cubed tofu at the end, for protein and a textural rhyme with the potatoes and silky greens.”
That sounds delicious, but my brain went to the textures in illustration I’ve been thinking about all month, the colors and interesting marks swirling behind my eyes as I fall asleep.
Textural rhyme is exactly what I’ve been trying to create in my sketches lately.
But what makes textures rhyme?
Here’s a riff on some ideas the dictionary has
A correspondence in sounds
A word agreeing with another
Identity in sound
Here’s some rhymes I enjoyed in kids poems I collected during prep for a few kids poetry events I led for National Poetry Month:
But what does a rhyme look like without words?
Do certain colors rhyme?
Interactions of Color
If colors rhyme I’m sure Josef Albers could hear them. E and I just read this delightful children’s book about him and are both a bit taken by his squares.
One Last Colorful Rabbit Hole
I’ve been watching the British show, Landscape Artist of the Year (you can find this year’s season on YouTube and past seasons on Amazon Prime), and I’ve become so taken by one of the artists, Jo Rance. She didn’t make it out of the first heat, but I just loved the patterns in her work. She seems like someone who understands textural rhyme very well (she has a textiles background, I think this helps).
Her paintings read like a poem, with little pieces of rhyming here, a near rhyme there, an enjambment over in that corner, into a line break yonder. Like a poem, each little section/line is beautiful in its own right, but it comes together to tell a story of a whole.
I’m quite taken by these new ideas bursting in my brain (see what I did there? What would alliterative colors look like?).
These ideas, and the mixed media play they are sparking, are keeping me grounded right now, giving me breathing space in my little world that sometimes feels like it’s closing in around me.
Is that the best, most cohesive, and pleasing way to end this post?
Does art rhyme with life?
Until next time,
Catie
P.S. Thank you to new subscribers! And sorry if you came here expecting bread, Bread Friday has evolved beyond sourdough baking, which was a gateway back to my creativity, which continues to evolve.