Symbols

All religious art has its set of symbols right? The neo-classical artists had a wide range of symbols based on ancient roman and greek mythology: cherubs, arrows, fruit, even many characters would exist solely as symbols. All types of Christian iconographic art used angels, crosses, halos, books, and other objects to express particular ideas. The Mayan, Egyptian, and many cultures had glyph-based communication systems. These glyphs existed somewhere between art and language and used consistent set of symbols.

I tend to use a lot of symbols in my work. Most of these symbols don't have well defined meanings, but they show up over and over and start to develop a life of their own with specific associations.

Some drawings are actually made up entirely of symbols, so they share a bit in common with ancient glyph based artwork. For example:

We've got basic stuff like triangle and squares, but also trees, TV's, clouds, bolts, eyes, thought and speech bubbles, "guardian" characters(the shrouded figues with circles for faces), and pipes. I need to work on giving these symbols definite characteristics. Part of how I'll do that is by looking at what associations these symbols already have. That's the first step towards creating my own iconography to go with the fake religion.

Most religions probably begin with the theology and the art follows. With this project I'll undertake the opposite: manufacturing a religion out of symbols that already exist.