Double Vision: John Oughton and Nina West

Cover design by Stephanie Molnar.

Double Vision
John Oughton and Nina West
Sixth Floor Press, 2025
Inquiries for copies:
​https://joughton.wixsite.com/author/contact
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The Ekphrastic Review: Tell us about your relationship with visual art. How did you become interested? Did your connection change along the way? Why is art important?

John Oughton: I’m not good at drawing or painting.  I’ve tried some collage and sculptural work, and enjoyed it.  But my greatest pleasure is viewing artwork by others, taking a trip through their visual minds… or minefields. I visit art galleries often, both public and private.
 
Art is important, because it is not merely decorative, but a way for humans to recall and celebrate the visible parts of their worlds that inspire them, Just as music has effects that can’t be explained simply by noting the chords, rhythm, notes in the melody, arrangements, etc., great visual art opens a different world to us—like seeing through someone else’s eyes.
 
The Ekphrastic Review: How did you become interested in photography? Tell us about your practice.
 
John Oughton: My father was a dedicated amateur photographer with a good eye for nature. He gave me my first “serious” camera, a 6X6 cm format Rolleicord, which took large square negatives. As I became more intrigued by the art, I learned to develop and process my own film and prints in makeshift darkrooms. With the shift to digital, photography has become much easier.  Anyone with a recent smartphone can take a technically decent image.  What still sets some photos apart from all the selfies is the revelation of something striking, hidden, or unusual in what the photographer’s eye sees and composes. That’s what I aim for.
 
The Ekphrastic Review: How did you and Nina originally connect, and what inspired you to work together on this collaboration?
 
John Oughton: We were both members of the Unitarian youth group Liberal Religious Youth (LRY) in our teen years, although we didn’t meet then. A Facebook page for LRY alumni with some mutual friends performed the introductions, and we came to value each other’s posts and images, then met face-to-face when I happened to visit Atlanta.
 
The Ekphrastic Review: Can you share your ekphrastic process with us? How did you approach Nina’s art in these poems? 
 
John Oughton: I knew I wanted to go beyond the form of ekphrasis which is simply description of the art. So, I had to look for a while at each image, letting my eye rove around, noting surprising or ambiguous elements, and sometimes visual puns, hidden in the work.  Her drawings are quite complex and detailed, so you have to give them time to reveal themselves to you. Just saying, “Oh, there’s a drawing of a $5000 bill, – I’ll write about money,” wouldn’t do her image justice.  Then, I let my imagination take off, often seeing the image as having a before- and after- story..
 
The Ekphrastic Review:  How did you choose what photographs to include in the project? 
 
John Oughton: I picked ones that I thought either suggested a narrative, or that made some kind of powerful visual statement. One of the ones I suggested, and that she chose to respond to, is a very mundane subject: a glass of water on a desk. But to me, it’s a meditation on the power of light and shadow, and how things transform these into something revelatory.  She picked up on all that.
 
The Ekphrastic Review: Did you view Nina’s art differently after engaging with it so intimately? What did you notice that wasn’t immediately apparent to you?
 
John Oughton: As I said earlier, her art is richly detailed and nuanced.  I had already bought two of her drawings, and traded a photo print for another, so clearly I felt her vision suited mine. However, just as an example, I hadn’t consciously thought of the pun in her $5000 bill drawing, with all the “sand dollars” in the background, until I started writing about it.  I just considered it an amusing substitution of a natural form for human ones.
 
The Ekphrastic Review: Did Nina’s poems give you new insights into your photography?
 
John Oughton: Yes.  Her view of the universe is more spiritual and perhaps mystical than mine. So, as one instance, I thought I was taking a picture of a cool-looking round window in a brick wall with dramatic lighting.  She saw it as the Eye of the Universe, and responded appropriately.
 
The Ekphrastic Review: Do you have a favourite poem in this collection? Tell us about it.
 
John Oughton: I’ll nominate my poem “Chiaroscuro.”  The title means “light and darkness” in Italian. On the surface, it’s a drawing of a quiet suburban street.  But the lighting, the tones, and the odd little figure at the lower right suggests something more surreal, even a bit ominous. And I mention what lessons I got from the image.
 
The Ekphrastic Review: Was there a poem that was difficult or presented some challenges? How did you resolve the situation?
 
John Oughton: I’d say, “Levels Drawn.” This earlier drawing of Nina’s includes a map section, and a botanical illustration of a strange plant.  There’s something dream-like about it, which I evoked with “a waking effort to fix form on the ever-changing.”  Here, I had to balance some description with insights from studying the lines and forms
 
The Ekphrastic Review: What other ekphrastic projects have you been involved in? Any future plans for ekphrastic writing?
 
John Oughton: For ten years, my Toronto poetry workshop, the Long Dash, participated in an annual ekphrastic event with the studio artists of the Women’s Art Association of Canada. We met monthly to see their new work in their studios, wrote poems inspired by them, and then held an exhibition and reading of the pairings during National Poetry Month (April). Up to six or seven poets participated each year, and as many as a dozen artists.  This may well be the largest-scale, and longest-running, ekphrastic collaboration anywhere.

I think I’ll just incorporate ekphrastic writing more into the mix of things I usually work with.  This collaboration with Nina was so easy, and so fruitful, that I may try something similar with another artist-writer at some point.

John Oughton

​The Ekphrastic Review: Tell us about your relationship with visual art. How did you become interested? Did your connection change along the way? Why is art important?

Nina West: I have been interested in visual art for as long as I can remember… My mother especially encouraged that by doing things like giving me books about artists. I can remember liking the art of Toulouse-Lautrec when I was around nine years old and that for some reason I had a little crush on him. I thought he looked interesting. Of course, the book I was reading was for children so I don't think it included some of the things that adults might consider unsavory about him. What I'm saying is that it was also interesting to learn more about him and his art when I was an adult. 
 
What I initially aspired to be was an illustrator of children's books. Over time I stopped wanting to be an illustrator of children's books and instead wanted to be an artist, a fine artist. Still later in life, I serendipitously began working for a museum here in Atlanta where I live, the Michael C. Carlos Museum, first doing outreach programs for school-aged children. Eventually I worked in the museum itself, as Manager of Programs for Children and Families…I feel extremely fortunate that I had the chance to work there. It's not easy to make a living as an artist, selling your work. So it was a great privilege to be able to work on behalf of art, bringing art education to children and families. I got to learn even more about art along the way. And I had the privilege of being able to live up close and personal with art. Sometimes I was asked to draw objects in the collections as a form of visual interpretation to be used occasionally on labels in the galleries or in printed brochures and that sort of thing. Being able to sit with an ancient object and hold it, in the conservation lab, to be able to look at it and think with it, see it as the artist who made it did, to become aware of the decisions that artist was making as the object was created, that was a great honour. 

My life has been not only about making art but about gaining a wide-ranging art historical background. My life is much richer because of all of my time spent making art, learning about it, thinking about it, learning techniques, and teaching others. 

Art is important because the objects created, the artifacts whether ancient or contemporary, are part of the story we human beings are telling about ourselves individually and about our lives in the context of a certain time and place. But the fascinating thing is that if a work of art survives, it also has a life that is outside its original context. And that means that other people can have their own experiences with the art, whether they know its history or not. Beyond this, I believe in some way that I can't necessarily defend rationally, that art that is conceived and produced with an honest, authentic, and thoughtful intent has the capacity to change our world, change minds, and hearts. People can see what has been created and be subtly or not so subtly changed. And so the individual is changed, so, too, can cultures be changed. These changes aren't immediate, as art takes time for its influence to move out into the world. I believe that art, broadly speaking (literature, music, dance, poetry, theater, puppetry, etc.), when created from this place of authenticity and thoughtful intent, is the best of what we humans do, and in some ways counteracts or is an antidote to some of the destructive things human beings do. 
 
The Ekphrastic Review: Tell us about your art practice. How did you get started? What materials do you work with? What kind of themes and ideas drive your artistic vision?

Nina West: I have drawn all of my life. How I learned to focus on what I want to do also developed early, beginning with my passion for horses. I did not ever own a horse or have formal riding lessons but I loved looking at them and riding whenever there was an opportunity, so horses were a first subject... 

Eventually I went to college, to art school, because all I ever really wanted to do was make art. My studio art degree is in fine art Printmaking and in the course of getting that degree I learned a number of intaglio techniques, stone lithography, and woodcut/linoleum cut block printing. I also learned to paint using oil paints, watercolor, and materials like charcoal, conte crayon, and pen and ink. I've also taken some short term classes in stone sculpture, ceramics, paper-making and lost wax bronze casting. 

But the bedrock of what I have done has always involved drawing. And since graduating from college many years ago, I have focused on drawing, often in charcoal, coloured pencils, pen and ink, and some watercolour. 

An early theme in my adulthood was the result of objects my husband had around the house. He started out as a hardware engineer. This resulted in having a lot of electronic parts and printed circuit boards around, way back when these things were not quite so manufactured and often had a "home made" look. I got fascinated with the traces on circuit boards and the designs they made. I noticed that they had some of the look of so-called "primitive art," like rock pictographs and that sort of thing, so I made quite a few etchings, monoprints, and watercolours based on these. I have found it fascinating to look at circuit boards with integrated circuits on them because all the traces and leads that are connected to them look a lot like certain forms I have seen in ancient Aztec art, for example. I see a similar spirit in some aspects of Tibetan mandalas, too. 

After that phase of art, I began drawing houses in suburban neighborhoods. Most of these drawings were in black and white. They interested me because in some ways they were so boring! Brick ranch houses. What could be more ordinary? And yet, the more I looked, the more I became drawn to how light moved across the surfaces and changed the shapes, patterns and textures. I noticed that there was this funny (to me) interplay between suburban houses and their landscapes, that people have a tendency to want to rule nature, so the plants surrounding houses tended to be very orderly. Bushes were trimmed in very precise ways. Flowers were planted in rows or, if they curved, I could see it was a very intentionally and humanly designed way. Meanwhile, because of the environment here in Atlanta (very tall trees and a lot of tangled dense undergrowth due to our long growing seasons) there was this kind of opposition, this kind of denial I could see. People like to entertain the illusion that it's possible to control or rule nature, this these obsessively trimmed bushes and manicured lawns, flowers planted in rows. Meanwhile, Nature, the Real Nature, is barely contained. It doesn't take much for Real Nature to take over, sprouting small trees in cracks in the streets and such. 

About eleven years ago, I resigned from my museum job and turned my attention to making art. Through a series of funny coincidences, something amusing presented itself to me... about making money. I was no longer "making money" meaning no longer earning a paycheck. But a silly pun had presented itself to me when working on some art with children who thought I said "salmon dollars" when in fact I was saying "sand mandala” (an artform from Tibetan Buddhism). And thus was born the beginning of my foray into "making money." I began making collages of my own currency. I call it Spiritual Currency. I used high quality scans I found online of actual old US currency and made copies, cut them up, explored ideas about what money is. Eventually I realized that paper currency is a form of limited edition fine art print. And I was surprised at how many words we use in relation to money are also connected to ideas about a spiritual or religious life. For example, our word “money” comes from the name of a Roman goddess, Juno Moneta, at whose temple Roman coins were minted. So interesting, this connection between money and religion! At some point, when I had been making collages of Spiritual Currency, I realized I wanted to DRAW all of those engraved lines. So I made drawings that were based on currency that were pen and ink. 

I continually work on both of these themes, suburban houses and Spiritual Currency. In addition to these, I periodically need a break from that and I work on small drawings, usually in colour, that are pretty strictly geometrical. Those are mandalas, a square format, with circles and straight lines that form other shapes. These mandalas are usually in coloured pencil. I also periodically make drawings based on art from the ancient Americas and other ancient cultures as well as Japanese block prints. 
For black and white suburban house drawings, I usually draw with a particular type of oil charcoal pencil made by a company in Austria. The pencils are Nero Cretacolor oil pencils. And I'm being very specific about what I draw with because these are significantly different from plain old charcoal. I also draw with a range of graphite pencils and coloured pencils. I make collages sometimes. Some collages are the end product and some become like a study from which I make a drawing. I generally draw on Smooth Bristol paper, several sizes. And another paper I like and use is BFK Rives, a machine made 100% rag paper. 

I generally work with materials that require the least amount of time to set up or clean up so the time I have for working on art can be devoted to that and not to pedestrian tasks. I prefer using materials that are not toxic to me nor to the environment for the most part. These are intentional choices I have made. 

I have one day a week in particular that I completely set aside for working on art. I fit in time on other days as I can. It would be my preference to spend at least two to three hours a day working on art but I am not always able to do that. However, I do guard the one full day each week when I work on art. It can be hard to keep other things from encroaching on that one full day. 

The Ekphrastic Review: How does it feel to have someone write poetry from your artwork?

Nina West: I felt a little shy about having poetry written about my work at first. People sometimes are complimentary, telling me they like this or that. Very rarely, someone asks to buy a drawing. And occasionally artist friends will give me feedback or critique. But I haven't ever had someone who writes, poetry or prose, about my art. My shyness about having John write about my work evaporated as he shared what he wrote. I could see in his words that he did "get" what it was I was trying to say. And he was describing my artwork with both a sense of humour and with thoughtfulness. 

The Ekphrastic Review: Were there any surprises when you read John’s poems?

Nina West: Not surprises, exactly. I know John is a good writer. I could feel the power and the beauty of well-placed words describing and responding to what I had drawn. His words created word drawings that were true to my artwork and true to what he was seeing. I was very pleased that he could see all that he could. 

The Ekphrastic Review: Did John’s poems make you see your own art in a new or different way? Tell us about that.

Nina West: As much as anything, John's poems made me see that I am not wasting my time making drawings, making art. He took me seriously and he took me playfully. And in engaging with me in this way, it's confirmation of this belief I have that making art does matter, that the fact that something exists that hadn't existed before means that another person, in this case John, can see it and also create, as if setting up a sort of chain reaction. 

A long time ago, my printmaking professor in art school said to me, "You have to think about, who is your audience?" By posing that question he wasn't meaning that I needed to create in order to please some particular person. What I got from that is that making art is, in part, for the person making it. But that's only half of the life of artwork. It's also meant to be seen. You don't have to have a huge audience. You don't have to be seen by hundreds of people and become famous. But your artwork is meant to be seen by someone, so it is a form of connection, like a message in a bottle sent out into the world. And having a person see it whose art is in words, that's an especially wonderful connection, because something more is created in the process, like a great unfolding or a movement. There's a book I've read called The Gift for artists about this matter of making art and whether one is making a product to be sold as a transaction, a commodity. Or is the work of art a gift in a sense, not to be part of a transaction, not to be a commodity, but that art, to be alive, needs to be a gift in the sense that it is given and then received by another who is also then able to pass along, in some form, the energy of that gift. Art is about movement, movement of ideas, of generosity, of creativity. So by John writing poems about my art, it's like he entered into this idea of movement, of creativity as energy that pours into the field of ideas and images and art. 

The Ekphrastic Review: What process did you use when writing about John’s photos?

Nina West: My process varied. In general though, I looked at the photographs he sent to me and then I took a few days to let those images settle in my mind's eye wherever they did. I would think and not think of them while I was out walking. I'd see which ones seemed to surface in my mind or that asserted themselves. And then I would sit with my iPad open on one side, looking at the photo, and with my computer on the other, typing. I looked. And I looked again. And I looked away, then looked again. I tried to make myself open to what came up, and pay attention to that without judgement. In this respect, it felt like a form of meditation, to be open and not to be attached to what I experienced or felt or wanted to express. 

The Ekphrastic Review: Were there any challenges for you in the collaboration? How did they resolve?

Nina West: I really can't think of any difficult challenges. I was, in part, taking John's lead as I haven't ever done anything quite like this before, though I do certainly have experiences and feelings about all kinds of works of art. But no one had ever asked me to do this kind of exchange before. He selected photos to send to me and didn't tell me too much about why he'd photographed them or where. And I sent him images of my drawings and didn't say much about what they mean or why I created them. I often can't put into words why I make what I do. In fact, I rather prefer not to "know" what something means or why I'm doing it, at least while I am drawing. I didn't ask John if he's like that, too, now that I think of it. I've just assumed that he photographs things that catch his attention. 

I have found John very easy to work with. We sent things back and forth, made some comments sometimes. And then wrote. On the purely practical level I know that John did a lot of organizational work I deeply appreciated. I can do that, but I don't necessarily do that with enthusiasm. So I greatly appreciated that practical input. He periodically sent documents with what we had so far. He's been very fair in all kinds of ways, encouraging and supportive. It's felt like a very nourishing collaboration and nothing I can think of has seemed like a difficult challenge. 

The Ekphrastic Review: What is your favourite poem in the collection and why?

Nina West: If I can select only one then it would be what he wrote about a collage from my Spiritual Currency series. That poem/prose is entitled “Report: Forensic Examination of Purported USA $5000 Bill.” I love it because he has, with customary wit (because in my experience of John he has a great sense of humour), written about that Five Thousand Dollar Bill made up of a number of sand dollars. It is a visual pun or play on words for sure and I did intend it that way. And he got that. In person, I'm not someone who stands out as the life of the party, telling clever jokes and such. But I do have a sense of humour and it shows up sometimes in art work, plays on words, odd ideas I'm trying to express. And John got all of that, wrote as if he were an appraiser of currency, noting all sorts of things about the bill. And by the very end, he also totally got what it is I also intend all through the series of Spiritual Currency bills and that is, "What is really of value?" That's a significant question, in my opinion.

I also really love what John wrote about Seabirds. Among other things, I love the visual construction of that poem on the page. 

The Ekphrastic Review: What is your favourite artwork in the book? Tell us the story behind it.

Nina West: I love the drawing called Seabirds that accompanies John's poem of that name. For me, this particular image was one that came out of working on the Spiritual Currency, though at this point the format of a bill was gone. There was no border or reference to money in it. This was pure drawing with all of those pen and ink lines meant to evoke engravings (a nod to my own fine art printmaking origins). I was feeling conflicted in my own life at the time about some things that I couldn't even entirely name to myself and it was summed up in these two creatures that were caught with each other, their bills crossing, like a weaving. Was this an enormous bird and a small fish? Was it an enormous fish? Were they fighting? Were they trying to save each other? Would they both drown? Would one survive and the other would not? And then there were these two moon, one large and full, the other small. When I finished this drawing, and after an extended period of time working exclusively in pen and ink, I could feel suddenly a total shift and that I needed to do something entirely different. So what I began doing next were a series of small square mandalas in colour, working with circles and squares and straight lines, the intersections of them. And as much vibrant colour as I could squeeze out of my coloured pencils. 

Nina West: What’s next for Nina?

Nina West: What I've begun working on in my art is about vision and visualization. I've been reflecting a lot about where images live inside me. I have a "mind's eye" but how do I see using that? How does what's inner relate to what's outer and vice versa? I'm aware that the visual world, the outer world, and how I take in images, all of that relates to memory. I'm fascinated by the relationship between what I see inside myself and what I see in the outer world. I can tell that some images are memories and that my mind constructs from what I remember, either by pulling up a memory or putting together parts of images to construct something new, the latter being particularly apparent in dreams that are like the real world and not all like the real world, reminding me of waking life but also depicting places I have never seen. And some images arise spontaneously, as a result of being in deeper states, like those in meditation or at the edge of sleep. I think of that source of internal imagery as tapping into the great cosmic ocean of images, surfacing and bobbing and disappearing, like a vast oceanic alphabet collectively a part of all our human minds. And... I must keep drawing!!

Nina West