Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Random Word

Back in November and December, I read Patti Digh's book Creativity is a Verb, and a word popped out at me in the closing pages. Patti talked about how life is a palimpsest. I had run across the word before, but didn't really know what it meant. Originally a palimpsest was a manuscript page, usually on parchment, that was written on, scraped off, and reused. New writing was written on top of the removed text. Since parchment was expensive and time consuming to produce, old manuscripts were often recycled. Some times, some of the original writing can still be seen. The word "palimpsest" has now come to mean anything with visible layers. Sounds a lot like my art.

So, I began a page in the journal (the left hand page). I looked up "palimpsest" in a dictionary and a thesaurus. I added definitions and related words. A search online led me to several artists, and reading through one artist's statement, I came across the word "obfuscation". Obfuscation is the concealment of meaning in communication by using ambiguous, confusing, or misleading words and phrasing.

In the rectangles, I added some of my own thoughts, and both words have led to ideas for artwork and themes for artwork. Although I began this page months ago, I keep going back and adding to it. The right hand page lists Patti's Creative Commitments and contains the upside down drawing of a Picasso portrait of Igor Stravinsky - an exercise Betty Edwards uses in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

I love stumbling upon an idea or word that can spark so much.

1 comment:

Erin Keane said...

I like the word and it's meaning! You rock the palimpsest! That could very well become one of Blogger's verification words... mine today is bredlyp ;)