I was reading various art articles this weekend and came across a couple of really interesting pieces that looked more like writing than abstract art. Apparently, they were Asemic writings. I asked myself, what the heck is Asemic writing?

According to Wikipedia, “Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing.” The word asemic means “having no specific semantic content” or, “without the smallest unit of meaning.” With the non-specificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning, which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. All of this is similar to the way one would deduce meaning from an abstract work of art.”

How cool is that! What can I come up with trying that technique? Well, the answer is the piece below. Looks like I created my own Hieroglyphic. Now if I can just decode what it says I’ll know what it means 🙂

“Once Upon a Dime a Nickel Made Sense”

I haven’t painted on canvas in about 5 years so, I decided it was time for a revisit. I started to use Liquitex Acrylic Inks around that time as a more modern replacement for traditional gouache, providing vibrant colors and permanence on my favorite watercolor papers. Paper still absorbs some of the paint and has painting characteristics that are different compared to canvas — I decided it was time to see how my style would work on canvas with the Acrylic Inks.

The result below is a small 8″ x 10″ canvas inspired by various Native American art. The name of the piece is “Donoma” from the Omaha tribe, meaning: Sight of the Sun.

“Donoma, Sight Of The Sun”