This article will discuss why does art tell a story, why it matters to you, and how to tell a story in your own work of art.

Is art important to you? What does art mean to you? Or perhaps, how can you tell your story in your work of art?

The term ‘storytelling’ is used loosely and often interchangeably with other word-finders like ‘story’, ‘narrative’ and ‘biography’.

Or is it just a part of the definition of what art is?

According to Sigmund Freud, a story is “a wish-fulfillment fantasy, a symbolical expression of human experience, a complex arrangement of elements arranged to represent an idea”.

Whether or not Freud’s definition is correct, the idea is a good one and probably still holds true today. There is no one true story, no one narrative, just a collection of symbols and images which reflect a theme or an experience.

The beauty of this process, for a storyteller, is that every meaning is different. If you give yourself the opportunity to make a difference to the story, or to find a new meaning in your painting, then you can greatly enrich it.

As long as you’re committed to telling the truth and being creative, then you have no excuse for failing. The potential for impact when you use a story as a tool, is large.

Perhaps this is why so many artists and writers are drawn to the idea of using the story to tell their art.

Think of the greatest artists in history, from Vincent Van Gogh to Pablo Picasso, George Grosz to Salvador Dali, Henri Matisse to Jackson Pollock.

These artists all told stories in their work.

They found it rewarding to be at the origin of a new type of art, that would capture people’s imagination.

Any art work has two things in common: It has a message and it has a story. If you aren’t taking advantage of the opportunity to create a story within your work of art, then you’re missing out on a powerful tool.

A good story can increase your audience (if you’re telling a story about something people already care about), and provide you with a sense of truth and purpose.

The art and science of storytelling

There is a long history of the story as an art form. This has been evident since the earliest cave paintings, some 13,000 years ago. But it wasn’t until the 18th century that the term ‘storytelling’ was used to describe the artform.

The terms storytelling and anecdote were first used by Edmund Burke and are essentially synonymous. According to Alexander Motyl, in his book Art in America: The Story of a Visual Art, Burke, with his Puritanical and aesthetic background, understood the power of story, especially the structure of stories.

Burke was a close friend of the philosopher William Hazlitt and considered his most successful book to be On Painting. Hazlitt argued for the central role of the story in art and illustrated his point with quotations from several masters of art.

Hazlitt stated that any reader who has ever sat down to read a novel by Charles Dickens, John Updike or Pearl S. Buck, will agree that they tell a story and they have told their story through the structure of the story.

The concept of telling a story, as opposed to writing a journal entry, is often foreign to most visual artists, yet we are all so used to sitting down to tell our stories as it is such a natural and intuitive method for many of us.

To be successful, most visual artists will need to find a way to add a story to their art.

Storytelling can be used in the way that painting can be used – by creating images to inspire an experience, rather than to tell a story in words.

This approach offers the artist more opportunity to surprise the audience with a new and unexpected element, perhaps not immediately obvious from the way the image is initially presented.

Artists need to consider using the story-telling form to share their art. They need to be able to take the audience on an emotional journey and to provide them with a powerful, memorable and relatable story.

The first step is to identify what story you want to tell. You need to find a message to give your art, the core and common thread that unites your work.

You need a message that will inspire people to look beyond the surface of the image and consider the underlying, important aspects of it.

This is when the creation of your visual story begins. You will need to think about the main elements of your artwork: the subject, the people, their stories, and how those elements are resolved.

When you have completed your piece, be sure to think of it as a single cohesive narrative, taking your audience through each stage of the journey.

This approach is most effective with images and there are a number of forms that story telling can take, depending on the size and topic of the piece. For example, an illustration on a blank canvas may be a narrative of a single painting, while an on-going series of studies may be the story of a student studying the artist’s work in a study.

If you want to create a narrative for a large-scale series of images, you could consider using music, poetry or another type of literary source to help to create a consistent, meaningful story.

If the subject of your image is open and involves more than one person, you can also consider putting your work into a series. For example, the story of a family or the challenge of immigration could be told in several, sequential photographs.

As Alexander Motyl states in his book Art in America, “A story is a living, breathing thing that is always being shared with a new set of readers, with the publication of each new chapter”.

Narrative art has always been around, it is simply that it was not recognised until the late 20th century. It has been popularised by the likes of John Baldessari, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Ed Ruscha.

But storytelling and the structure of the art world are not new concepts.

Each artist has an individual story to tell, a unique way of communicating with others. But it is not just the structure of the art world that has changed, so has the way that artists share their work.

Younger artists, influenced by the younger generation of visual artists such as Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and Jeremy Deller, are taking on social media as a tool for both personal and professional growth.

Many are using Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to share images and provide a window into the inner workings of their creative process. They are creating visual stories about their practice and sharing them.