(Click thumbnails above to view the paintings)

Anti-Calligraphy is one of several series exploring the nature of the sign and its continuity with the icon on one hand and the purely gestural on the other. Although they are deeply grounded in my long studies of East Asian art and calligraphy, these works comprise the antithesis of East Asian calligraphy in several respects: in the use of viscous acrylic paint whose friction is recorded in the final image (as opposed to the traditional sumi or "India ink" that flows through the brush easily); in the placement of white on black (a reversal of the traditional black on white); in the creation of a gessoed and painted surface that resists the brush; and finally in the insistence on pure image without reference to meaning. The "Hiragana" series centers a single "letter" from the Japanese hiragana syllabary in otherwise empty space. The "Smudge" series is pure gesture, without ideographic or phonemic content of any kind.