The paintings that I’m working on now derive impetus from my ongoing consideration of the history of the Decipherment of Linear B script.
02-10, 22 x 29-3/4“ (55.88 x 75.56cm)
pastel, pencil, pigment, watercolor on paper
Some are done on paper and some on linen with water base paint, raw pigment, at times oil. Often they are mediations of the syllabary, logograms and pictograms of Linear B script.
During the process of their making the presence of a subject (and its sense of meaning) is displaced by a shift to information that’s the equivalent of static, like a whispering in the background that distracts the audience from the information being presented = peripheral information, paralleling the working attempts at the decipherment of the Linear B script (with its false starts, made up translations, and the triumph of an amateur.)
01-10, 22 x 29-3/4“ (55.88 x 75.56cm)
gesso, pigment, watercolor on paper
The paintings develop through acts and their displacements, through assertions and their subsequent removals. Absence and lacuna contribute to form the image, generally so in painting, and particularly here. Meaning is arrived at through contradiction and subsequent re-grouping.
04-10, 22 x 29-3/4“ (55.88 x 75.56cm)
pigment, pastel, gesso, watercolor on paper
just a word about Linear B:
Linear B is thought to be the beginning of language, a precursor of Greek. in that sense it embodies the relationship of culture to nature in early Greece and western Europe
It was first thought confined to Crete, yet in1939 a large number of clay tablets inscribed with Linear B writing were found at Pylos on the Greek mainland, much to the surprise of Sir Arthur Evans, a professional archeologist, who had spent most of his life adhering to the notion that Linear B was confined to Crete.
Evans spent the rest of his life trying to decipher Linear B. He realized that three different writing systems were used in ancient Crete: a 'hieroglyphic' script, Linear A, and Linear B. The hieroglyphic script appears only on seal stones and has yet to be deciphered. Linear A, also un-deciphered, is thought to have evolved from the hieroglyphic script and was used until the 15th Century BC. After the Greeks conquered Knossos, Linear B developed, probably from Linear A, although the relationship between the two scripts is unclear.
03-10, 22 x 29-3/4“ (55.88 x 75.56cm)
pastel, gesso, pencil, watercolor on paper
As an opinionated old-school academic who was certain that Linear B was Minoan and not a precursor of Greek, Evans prevented further investigation into the possibility that the language on the tablets was Greek. Linear B’s decipherment was subverted further by academics who simply made up what they called translations when they did not know what the script meant.
12-10, 22 x 29-1/2“ (55.88 x 74.9cm)
pigment, watercolor on paper
It’s as much the process of discovery as the notion of the script itself that interests me. (Linear B was eventually deciphered by Michael Ventris, an architect and amateur archeologist who had been aware of Linear B from the time he was 14.)