'Words are Elves' is a passing phrase that Jean Paul Sartre exclaims in his book, Saint Genet. It is the kind of phrase that catches you off guard and causes you to wonder. These three words are found in Sartre's chapter that examines Jean Genet's aesthetics, 'A Strange Hell of Beauty'. They reference the ability of a stylus to magically transform images. The paintings in this series take the implications of these words to heart. For the first time in my work, these paintings combine my practices of the 'chromatic translation' and the 'transcribing' of texts. The colored blocks are chromatic stand-ins for the letters of key phrases found in the chapter. The field upon which the blocks are placed is a layered transcription of the larger text.
