e is for effervescent—Detail

Oil on Canvas, 101 x 101 xm

This oil painting is part of my series “Scripted” (“Re:Cursive”). Like the other works in this series, it shows the repetition of a letter and the resulting patterns.  Original alphabets were pictographs. In that sense my art series is situated within an ancient tradition. It is not, however, a homage or dead repetition. Rather, it subversively re-animates the ancient codes to enable precise and incisive comment on current cultural dilemmas.

The high percentage of white in both the handwriting and the background gives this piece a chalk-like appearance and conjures up vivid images, even smells of the blackboards in my childhood.

The letter of this artwork is ‘e’. I have chosen the single exemplar word “effervescent” to hint at the generative bubbles of meaning boiling up in the alphabet pot!

The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real. —Lucian Freud

Please find the full artist statement for the series “Re:Cursive” in the artwork section, with the painting “a is for arresting.”