Fragments of Sappho- a series of encaustic + oil paint tablets

This experimental body of work began in 2003. Ten were completed in 2011.  There will be an additional ten to this series.
Inspired by a Loeb Classics extant translation of Sappho's Fragments; where missing words are depicted as brackets and dots, I found the composition of each page compelling and visually charged. This series explores residual paint fragments left on a palette -orphans that never made it onto the canvas. A palette is information about a painting in its purest form. Mining and repurposing a retired paint palette is a metaphor for reading fragmented passages of an ancient poem. Considerations of meter [rhythm] and poetic content, make up these visually charged tablets.
Written translations over time distort and diffuse original content from its contextual form. Present day social media and technology has surpassed the copy/paste era and AI has the power to distort and reimagine other possibilities.
Fragments can only be interpreted relative to the content they reside in.

Sappho: a 7th BCE poet has been described as: many-minded, wordsmith, tale-weaver, charmer of impossibilities, and definer of the symptoms of desire. She created the adjective, 'bitter-sweet'.
Wax tablets were writing implements used from 1400 BCE - early 19th C.