As a species we have for millennia created an endless number of visual symbols to represent things in our environment. A vast array of lines, shapes, and colors are used every day to not only represent what we see, hear, or taste but to express to one another, our abstract ideas - what we feel, believe, and think.

Visual symbols, however, have no intrinsic meaning. We assign meaning to symbols, and to be broadly useful, they require that two or more people agree on what they mean. This mutual agreement is required of every alphabet of every written language used around the world – every letter, nikúd,`Swar, damma, jot, and tittle. This agreement on meaning is also required in written music and in the use of religious, military, civic, or scientific symbology.

This painting is simply an exploration of those notions. The visual configurations here have no intrinsic meaning other than what our imaginations might casually assign to them over lunch or a beer.

The usefulness of lines, shapes, and colors - on a cave wall, in print, or online or whether joined together as traffic signs, national flags, or mathematical equations - requires us to assign and agree on their meaning and in the end, extend to one another some level of human trust.