Signs & Symbols
Here is my journal page with my symbol for LIFE- beginning to end
Lately I’ve been exploring symbols. For my birthday last summer I got a couple of books on symbols. They explore, in great detail, the symbols humans have been making throughout time, religion and culture. From the 20,000 years old red cow deep in the caves of Lascaux to the most recent facebook thumbs up and texting emojis, humans have been trying to express through symbols the meaning of the world around us. It is interesting to me that some cultures went down a pictorial depiction path for their written language as in the ancient hieroglyphs of early Egyptian and Maya cultures all the way to the much morphed but still based in a picture symbol of Chinese and Japanese. It makes me wonder about languages that are base phonetically instead. Have our brains developed differently because of how we enter our written language? Does the visual come more naturally to those who have grown up with a pictorial based writing system? (Some PHD student out there take this on! Please). That is a very long introduction into my recent endeavor to create my own personal hieroglyphics my own code for ideas and thoughts and feelings. I don’t have any interest in other people understanding them these signs are for me. I’m filling up pages in my sketchbook with scribbles, x’s and o’x and crossing them out until one that is simple, and somehow true, reveals itself. It is an interesting exercise- one that has no beginning or end just a little wander into wondering. Here is my Mixed Media art journal with my symbol for LIFE.
I’m teaching a Mixed Media Art Journaling class in beautiful Mendocino California on August 6-7th here is a link for more info and registration > Mendocino Art Center Registration