Abstract hebrew Calligraphy

Abstract Hebrew Calligraphy came about, quite unintentionally, as a result of my own experimentation with the Hebrew letters. These forms, no doubt, appear strange to anyone not familiar with their development - with "where they came from".

Despite their similarity, at least at a quick glance, to Far-Eastern calligraphy, these forms did not develop out of any desire to "copy" forms in Chinese or Japanese calligraphy, but rather directly out of a (for me) necessary experimentation with letting the Hebrew letters take me where they wanted to go. This came out of a need for freer, more flexible forms for the (usually) square shapes of the aleph-bet, together with a sense of play, as well as a "listening to the body" form of meditation while writing".

I will demonstrate below the process involved in the development of a few of these letter forms.

In actuality, though, it began with a doodle.

This was meditation on the letter Tav. Below you can see its progression from its square form - through its cursive form in modern handwriting. The doodle exaggerated the horizontal thrust which felt "right" kinesthetically in the hand's movement as well as looking, to me, more interesting and elegant.

I next tried to experiment with different letters to see if could match the style and feel of Tav. I tried a "hard" letter, feeling that if I could make that match I would have a good chance of building an entire Aleph Bet. Here you see the development of "shin" - from the "square" shape, through its cursive shape, through a slight variation to give it the horizontal thrust. When the letter is written quickly with a brush, sometimes one of the elements gets abbreviated giving it the final shapes you see.