Ikdk.com
Title
RICHARD & IKUKO ROTH, PAINTERS - HOME PAGE
Contact
- Richard Lewis Roth and Ikuko R
-
- Forest Hills NY
- United States 11375-3042
-
- +1.7188969211
Description
I've been developing this series, which I call Moop, since 1974. In that year I was doing a series of paintings that loosely involved stripes. In one painting I determined to make a stripe effect by spontaneously drawing parallel strings of abstract linear shapes (in the spirit of the surrealist artist, Andre Masson). The intended stripe effect pleased me, but it was the character of the individual shapes that surprised me. I had stumbled on some unsuspected aspect of myself. That painting became Moop #1.
Those parallel strings of shapes had a calligraphic quality suggesting the writing of an exotic language. Independently of my painting, I've had an interest in the study of language. I had the idea of associating my two interests by assigning sound values to the various shapes so they became a kind of alphabet, although with peculiar and awkward rules.
With some exceptions, the Moop paintings spell out brief thoughts of mine, or random expressions, usually the names of authors or composers or of their works that I recently enjoyed. I don't consider the meaning content of the writing, whether Moop or otherwise (generally illegible anyway, except to me), as of any significance for the visual value of the painting. However it serves me in mobilizing my forces in making the painting.
