Paintings with Question Marks, Exclamation Points, Words and Periods
Paintings based on question marks, exclamation points, words and periods that dialogue with us, telling reflections and short stories through an abstract artistic language that combines elements such as relief painting, word art, neurographic art, zentangle, and color therapy.
Having a painting from the Q&A series at home or in the office offers a meditative mindfulness experience every day, helps focus on the present moment, but also helps overcome doubts thanks to the liberating effect sometimes contained in the message of the works.
What are your questions and answers? Write them to me and who knows, perhaps a new personalized work could be created just for you!
The paintings in the Q&A series can be created on 350 gsm fine art paper or on canvas, using my relief technique.
Artist Statement
We live in an era full of questions and imperatives, where almost every statement can be challenged and where we have numerous occasions every day to exclaim, to ask questions, or to reaffirm our opinions or convictions.
Yet, since we’ve become accustomed to expressing our ideas on social media and conducting online searches, we tend to omit question marks, exclamation points, and even periods themselves.
We often carelessly erase what medieval scribes introduced—scribes who reflected at length on texts and felt the need to mark interrogative sentences with the abbreviation qo (from quaestio, meaning ‘question’), and those expressing joy or surprise with the Latin word io, meaning ‘hurrah’.
We use many emojis, but we risk being misunderstood when, to save time and effort, we throw out sentences where it’s not always clear whether they should be interpreted as questions or statements. Who knows, then, how we use all that energy saved by avoiding typing a question mark or an exclamation point.
The idea behind the paintings in the Q&A Series stems precisely from these considerations. Before being a visual artist, I am a writer and I started out as a linguist. Therefore, I’m someone sensitive to the way we write.
With these paintings, I try to restore dignity to these mistreated typographic punctuation marks, highlighting how their meaning actually captures something essential in the way we think, relate to others, and feel.