Lexicon

Long ago I saw a photo by Harry Callahan of sunlight reflecting off a pond. He had slowed the shutter down so that the reflected light turned into various wriggles and tiny circles. I was fascinated by the mysterious writing on the water and tried unsuccessfully to imitate it.

Two years ago I decided to try again. But as the drawings formed on the camera screen, I saw something completely different from expected. I seemed to be reading an unknown language that consists of signs and symbols that evoke ancient glyphs or pictographs in caves or on stone tablets. These were drawings made by the sun on the water. They were true “light drawings”, the name given to the very first photographs in the 19th century. I have always had a fascination with water and reflections, and it has figured in much of my artwork. The Lexicon Series was made by standing in various ponds in Cape Cod, like the above, and slowing the camera shutter way down to capture the silent voice of sunlight writing messages on the water.

Visual language can consist of many different elements: letters, characters, pictographs, glyphs, drawings. The human mind, always searching for meaning and messages, combines these forms into symbols, words or sentences. I see this as a language for a new generation. A language that can convey beauty and feeling, evoke memories of things known and unknown, a language that we can all share and understand with our hearts, but never be able to translate. 

 “It is a little bit of magic realized – of natural magic” - William Henry Fox Talbot