Beth Anderson, Children's Writer

Here’s a great writing activity for the classroom from author Lisa Rogers! Bringing emotion to the page can be a challenge for any writer, but it’s that emotion that connects a reader. Springboarding from her latest book, JOAN MITCHELL PAINTS A SYMPHONY: LA GRANDE VALLÉE SUITE, young writers use sensory imagery to bring emotion to the page. 

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“Riding a Bike with No Hands:” Using Sensory Imagery to Infuse Writing With Emotion 

by Lisa Rogers

Have you ever ridden a bicycle without holding onto the handlebars? If you did, you might have felt free and open to possibility–and maybe a little scared, too. 

Abstract artist Joan Mitchell likened her ideal painting experience to “riding a bike with no hands.”  She used vibrant color and careful mark-making to paint feelings and memories about people, places, and things she loved– her sister, her dogs, a tree in her garden. Her work represented emotions rather than realistic depictions.

“Joan Mitchell’s originality resides in the fact that she paints neither things nor herself, but the feelings she has of things.” —Yves Michaud, “The Colors of Feeling”

One group of 21 gigantic paintings was inspired by a description of a valley she’d never even seen. In JOAN MITCHELL PAINTS A SYMPHONY: LA GRANDE VALLÉE SUITE (illustrated by Stacy Innerst, Calkins Creek, 2025), I explore her creative process and how she infused those paintings with emotion.

By thinking like Joan Mitchell, students can practice infusing emotion into their writing. 

As an educator, I know that it can be difficult for students to put emotion on the page. It’s  a struggle for authors, too. Digging deep is not only challenging, it’s a little scary— like riding a bike with no hands. 

This poetry writing activity is based on my work with elementary students. Using this same process, educators can guide students in creating an abstract painting, or a piece of music.

Prewriting:

1. Show students the Joan Mitchell painting La Grande Vallée XVI, Pour Iva and ask them how it makes them feel. Explain that she was inspired by people, places, and things meaningful to her. She painted how she felt about them. Iva was one of Mitchell’s German Shepherd dogs.

2. Tell students that they will be thinking of a special place, and using their  senses to show their feelings about that special place. They’ll be writing like Joan Mitchell painted. Write along with your students to show that writing is important, that revision is part of the process, and that writers  learn from each other.

3. Ask students to identify the senses. I share from I Hear a Pickle and Smell, See, Touch, and Taste It, Too! by Rachel Isadora to spark ideas about what they might sense.  Prompt them to think of specific, rich describing words – “juicy” words – to describe what they might hear, smell, see, touch and taste, and record their responses on chart paper. Keep the chart displayed during writing time.

Think and Write Like Joan Mitchell Paints:

1.“I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me—and remembered feelings of them.” -Joan Mitchell (interview with Marcia Tucker, 1974)

Ask students to think of a place they know well and care deeply about—a place they carry around within themselves. Give them quiet thinking time to choose that place.

2. “I ‘frame’ everything that happens…I can see you now. This will be a photograph in my head.” — Joan Mitchel

Ask students to imagine that place and freeze it like a photograph. Prompt them to notice everything that they can sense. Then, ask students to record what senses they are using to imagine the scene on this worksheet.

3. “I want to paint the feeling of a space.” — Joan Mitchell

Discuss types of emotions with your students and record them on chart paper.
Ask students to think about how they feel when they are in that special place and list their emotions. 

4. “I don’t close my eyes and hope for the best… I want to know what my brush is doing.” —Joan Mitchell

Guide students in crafting a poem using some of their sensory details to transmit a mental image to their readers.

5. Read Mitchell’s poem, “Autumn.”

Ask: What senses did Joan Mitchell use? What picture do you have in your mind? What juicy words help you experience that scene? How do you think she felt about autumn? 

Autumn
by Joan Mitchell (age ten)

The rusty leaves crunch and crackle,
Blue haze hangs from the dimmed sky,
The field are matted with sun-tanned stalks —
Wind rushes by.

The last red berries hang from the thorn-tree,
The last red leaves fall to the ground.
Bleakness, through the trees and bushes,
Comes without sound.

Poetry, December 1935

Revision:

6. Encourage students to reconsider their poems. Ask them to identify which emotions they hope to convey through their words. How can they revise to make their words more juicy and help readers imagine their own version of that place? For example, ask them to think of ways to describe a bird flying, a cat meowing, the warmth of the sun, the taste of hot chocolate.

Sharing!

7. Encourage students to share their poems out loud. Share your own poem, too.

Recommended poetry resources:

All the Small Poems and Fourteen More by Valerie Worth

Poems in the Attic by Nikki Grimes

Sources: 

Isadora, Rachel. I Hear a Pickle and Smell, See, Touch, and Taste It, Too! (New York: Nancy Paulsen Books, 2016).

Michaud, Yves. “Conversations with Joan Mitchell, January 12, 1986,” in Joan Mitchell: New Paintings (New York: Xavier Fourcade, 1986).

Michaud, Yves, translated by James Scarborough. “The Colors of Feeling,” in La grande vallée, Galerie Jean Fournier catalogue, 1984.

Mitchell, Joan. “Autumn.” Poetry, December 1935. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56075/autumn-56d23840ef134

Sandler, Irving. “Mitchell Paints a Picture,” ARTNews, October 1957. https://www.joanmitchellfoundation.org/joan-mitchell/citations/mitchell-paints-a-picture

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