I have been reading about the art of Paul Klee, one of my favorite visual artists. One writer notes (if I’m correct in recalling his thesis) that the visual elements in Klee’s work are ideograms (like emojis that relate abstract ideas). He also notes that the ideograms are used a visual language. What is fascinating to me is that, while spoken language relates concepts sequentially, the visual language of a painting is presented to the viewer all at once. The viewer is responsible for “reading” the picture. The artist is responsible for creating a coherent message (or not?).

Below, I am dipping my toe in the water of visual language described above. I consider this to be similar to playing scales and arpeggios while learning to play a musical instrument. My ideograms are anthropomorphized alphabet letters. They are arranged in a pattern. I left the scaffolding of my mechanism of placing the letters in the picture to show that I did not place the ‘ideograms’ randomly. Hopefully, I can construct works with more complex ideas.