Cities of You

System #3, Visit #1: Rhyia

16 x 20", Gouache, Pen, and Marker on Paper

Rhyia is the symbolic system used for communicating the ambiguous, the concealed, and the impermanent. Certain things become and unbecome so quickly, the immutability of text or photographs cannot achieve the level of representation Rhyia can. Consider a fallen oak tree in a humid environment- both a dead organism and a living system, transforming itself into something else every second. The trunk acts as a coffin as the woody innards decay and decompose, while the surface draws attention to the incubator giving life to young moss and other plant life. The clear and colorful rectangles of Rhyia can show the different layers of a subject at any and all possible stages of being. You may read the rectangles top-to-bottom, left-to-right, diagonally, or in reverse. The Rhyia system is not linear, but cyclical and unstable. Rhyia mimics nature. If Rhyia were a book, it would have no beginning or end, pages will be missing, and some pages duplicated.