Sign painting

My MFA thesis project titled Sign Painting includes five oil paintings. Each painting contains two words squished together, eliminating the space between them: BOXINGGRIN, WHISKYMUSTACHE, SLOWAMBULANCE, PERISHOW, GRIZZLEND. In my painting practice I provocatively invite words into the visual space of oil paint. The provocation comes from the idea that language, which is verbal, and paint, which is purely visual, are opposed. But I have found that language inevitably asks to be painted. Poetic language suits paint because it is especially abstract, often with unusual syntax, and radically departing from regular language. For me, paint and language are in relationships that touch on abstraction, contingency and temporality. The abuttingness of words and the gooeyness of oil paint generate potential – implying other words, other colors, other compositions, ad infinitum. While at first they might appear strange in paintings, words belong.