Scriptures: Warp and Weft.  2020

Scripture means anything written. From Latin, it is like the English word “script.” But Scripture has come to refer to sacred and Biblical writings. The religious significance of “writing” an image is tied to Byzantine icon painting and to illuminated manuscripts, where a text was illuminated, or illustrated. Within each image is not only the history of Christianity, but also a process of prayer and ritual in its re/creation.

Like a script, Scripture lays out a story over time, and assigns settings and actors.

Warp and Weft are terms used in weaving, the structure (warp) and the weave (weft). There are opposing elements, vertical and horizontal, and have metaphorically represented a philosophical dichotomy, like yin and yang. They are also interdependent–  these opposites are both necessary to make fabric. The word “trama” in Italian means the weave, and the plot of a narrative. In English, the expression “warp and weft” means the ins and outs of one’s life. Here we have an environment and an action, a location and an actor.

If we take this further, the word “text” is related to texture and textile. So writing is a kind of weaving, and weaving is a kind of storytelling. Like fabric, or the canvas we paint on, stories intertwine in time and in space. The weave and texture have much to do with painting on canvas, but also with creating a narrative, and tying a figurative knot.

This series of paintings (oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm) is a progression from “Knots.” The unraveled conglomerates, now threads, move through a “real” space, as if they are trying to spell, to write a story, or simply hear their own voice. The empty studio space is a setting, with a window or a painting, or a painting of a painting, in telling and retelling.