The Seven Words Series: process photos
These process photos of The Seven Words Series show the works in progress as I struggle with words that I am inherently uncomfortable with, but am convinced can be as poetic and beautiful as any other words, given the right context and design.
Much of my work balances the aesthetic, conceptual, and preservative nature of hand-written text. By working with words from George Carlin's ‘Seven Words You Can’t Use On TV’, I attempt to make these words more approachable. Each painting abstracts pure form from my personal experience with the word. The work exploits my own discomfort with vulgarity in a way that re-presents that experience as something beautiful.
These seven words are curses because we as a collective have decided that to be true, not because of any inherent vulgarity to the shape they take when written, the shape that our mouths take when saying them, or even their definition, really. When all of our baggage is put aside, the only thing vulgar about them is our own flawed perception.
