Ever since I started painting abstract works in 2016, I’ve been adding shapes. More recently, people have begun asking me what my little triangles and squares signify.
Mostly, I use them to represent dimensionality. The square was the third-dimension and the fourth was the fourth-dimension. In science/science-fiction, it’s speculated that once humans achieve light-speed travel, we will have entered the fourth-dimension (which is the control of time).
I’ve been influenced by esoteric cosmologies as well. The LACMA exhibition, “The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985” hugely influenced me and my use of shapes. You can read more about this genre- and institution- shifting exhibition here.
Anything that can represent something is a symbol. This includes colors, which I often use based on their associations with nature.
So why use symbols? I use lines, shapes and colors - and their symbolic meanings - to reference and represent the cosmos.
I know some artists shy away from abstraction and abstract expressionism for its legacy of expressing existential concepts.
As someone who worked in tech and academia, I was surrounded by people who were investigating existential problems all the time, sometimes presumptively.
In academia it was the literal ivory tower of folks not attending to diversity and inclusivity. In tech it’s folks who ultimately are beholden to a bottom line of maximizing (and monopolizing) profit over humanity’s interests.
I think artists are some of the best people to explore existential crises, because we’re not necessarily beholden to institutions and their agendas in the same ways. And in other ways, we are societal outsiders.
Science-fiction and subversive genres have always been interesting to me because of this peripheral viewpoint - that from the outside, we can see the center clearly.
Here are some common symbols that I use in my artworks.
Triangle
Who doesn’t have anything to say about the triangle? Found in cave paintings, the triangle has been around since literally the dawn of human civilization.
Personally, I use the triangle to represent the unity between the cosmos, humans and the earth.
In 2022, as I researched Chinese Taoist sigils (one of the earliest forms of writing), a common mark was a sigil that looked like a hat, or triangle, to represent the connection between humans and the heavens.
This sigil looks like the modern Chinese character for “human” as well.
Triangles in ancient cosmologies have represented fire.
So, it seemed befitting that I use them to signify three-dimensional objects, notably stars and planets.
Square
2022 study reflecting the rose-colored dawn and celestial evening
I use squares to reflect the fourth dimension.
According to science-fiction writers, until we achieve light-speed travel, we remain a third-dimension civilization.
Time represents the aspiration and limits of Anthropocentrism. I use squares to represent time in my abstract landscapes, which explore epic concepts like evolution and the birth and death of planets.
In 2024, I began to use squares to explore the concept of openings, doorframes, and portals with copper.
See below for copper’s symbolism and its relevance to my conceptually-driven sculptural works.
Line
Lines are prevalent in my works. They are drawn on my abstract paintings, but also used in installations to draw connections between objects.
In space, light appears as lines. It is only upon encountering an object, like a planet, that they appear otherwise.
This is why in science-fiction movies, whenever light-speed travel occurs, light appears as lines.
It’s not because the ships are moving “fast,” it’s because they’re passing by light in its uninterrupted form.
Gold & Copper
I use a lot of gold in my artwork. Melissa means honeybee in Greek. In Greek mythology, they were reincarnated souls (nymphs) that were messengers of the gods. Zeus purportedly turned bees into gold to protect them.
In many cultures, honey is perceived as liquid gold. Bees distill the sweetness of the divine and gifts honey to mortals. The Melissae were high priestesses / conduits of prophecy, inspirers of thought and song and speakers of divine truth.
Copper is a conductor, and thus represents conductivity.
It was associated with Venus during the Greco-Roman era and symbolizes femininity and malleability.
However, it holds a lot of symbolic context for expressing liminality and the transgression of spaces (the space between worlds).