Hope & Love

This artwork emerged from the characters of love and hope. The characters quite literally came to life as I stared at my computer screen. If I looked hard enough I could see both the word love and the word hope. They merge with one another, and I realised that we can’t really have one without the presence of the other.

There’s no hope without love.

There are many words for love in other languages such as Sanskrit, ancient Persian, and Greek. But we have only one. I wonder how we can value such a profound subject with a poverty stricken language, but I look forward to a time when we might have enough differentiation within our vocabulary and culture to describe or celebrate these feelings.

During the making of this image, I also read that in some ancient cultures there was no word for nature, because we are also nature. So to do harm to our environment or the nature around us would mean doing harm to ourselves. These traditions and belief systems show us a deep respect for our world and a strong sense of place and belonging, don’t you think?

Perhaps we don’t need vocabulary, for now, because love and hope are the borrowed parts of ourselves we can use instead.