The Three Word Paintings were conceived and executed during self-quarantine for Covid-19. The source material for the paintings is a highly personal letter that was written to me a few decades ago. The letter was a confessional letter (examined elsewhere in the Confessional Paintings series) in which honest and open descriptions of significant private historic events were conveyed. From the letter’s pages a series of three-word groupings were extracted and these became the basis of the paintings. Using a chromatic based alphabet, the form of each ‘word-form’ radiates from inside to outside, abutting against related ‘word-forms’.

The formal organization of these paintings is typically two-over-one. This compositional format loosely relates to a very abstracted layout of a mask (eyes over mouth).