The Artistic Alphabet
Oil on Birch Wood Blocks (30 blocks, 180 individual paintings, 2” x 2” each)
Design 2003-2005; Painting: 2018-2019
The Artistic Alphabet consists of 26 letter blocks, 2 number blocks, and 2 visual language blocks. The alphabet letters are done in a style evocative of the letter. For instance, “A” is for Arts & Crafts, “B” is for Blueprint, “C” is for Comic Book, and so on. We see both the front and back of each animal. The objects, painted in a trompe l’oeil style, look like they are in the block on one side and on top of the block on the other. Each number is found in a context in which one finds numbers: on a ruler, a stencil, a price tag, a roulette wheel, a barcode…. One visual language block also serves as a value scale. On this block, the basic shapes of the circle, the square, and the triangle are countered by variations of those shapes in the oval, the rectangle, and the star. The other visual language block depicts the four basic three-dimensional shapes: the sphere, the cone, the cylinder (and of course, the block itself is the cube), It also serves as a color wheel with complementary colors on opposing sides.