alphabets 2006 - 2008

A long term project developing series of lithographs printed from combination of stone and ball-grained aluminium plates - drawn using crayon and tusche; and photoplates exposed with customised computer generated digital washes.

Started in 2006 the basis for these prints has been research into the etymological development of language and the pictographic origins of symbols, letters, alphabets, characters and words. Inspired in part by the cultural roots of language, these prints, which employ combination of graphic elements both invented and borrowed are increasingly about the development of a visual language and its classification and presentation in charts, diagrams, lists, lexicons, dictionaries and as thesauri.