‘Words’ is a series of around 300 drawings that explores language in visual terms. Drawn and painted with Sumi ink on Tan Rives BFK paper, the collection is united stylistically, although techniques and subject matter vary widely. Some of the pieces offer a magnified view of a word, typically when something is askew, often to the point of blunt and thrilling stupidity. In other work, butchered colloquialisms are rendered in a heart-felt manner, immune to their idiocy and oblivious to their own revelation. Other pieces simply offer a chance to observe a newly conceived specimen of language burdened by its own dramatic scramble for definition. The collection as a whole embraces ambivalent and multiplicitous meanings and seeks to expose, mythologize, or reanimate words. - Kevin McNamee-Tweed