Illuminated Pages

About Illuminated Pages

 

This body of work references small illuminated manuscripts. I imagined the original owners paging through the manuscripts and finding tranquility in the remarkable images. I wanted to create a similar experience of solace for the viewer with a group of small, rectangular tiles hung in a row. The tiles or "pages" of comforting images are to be viewed as one would have read a book. I want to create tiles that could provide comfort, just as the reader of an illuminated manuscript may find serenity.

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One repeated element of each tile is an abstracted central pool. It is the intrinsically soothing quality of water that I wish to evoke through the pool. Not only the comforting feeling that the beauty of a stream or the ocean can elicit is important. I also want to spark

the viewer’s memory of the calming effect of being in water and of the soothing sound of water. My pieces provide a pool of water, within our tension filled environment, that can allow us to momentarily escape to a more soothing spot.

 

Surrounding the water is a stylized flower bed. This area is to be soothing or up lifting as well. The composition of these abstracted gardens is drawn from the decorative borders in illuminated manuscripts but made in relief.