IN THE BEGINNING

In the beginning was the Word

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During my art studies at Unisa, I became interested in the beauty and complexity of natural systems – especially those systems that often go unnoticed - such as termite and birds’ nests, lichen, etc. At the same time, I started exploring the two dominant worldviews of today – the theories of evolution vs creation, and in particular, the idea of ‘the beginning’. Science cannot explain anything beyond the singularity which precedes the Big Bang. The Bible, however, has a simple description: ‘In the beginning was the Word’.

 

This is a fascinating concept. We live in a word-based universe. DNA is the longest word in existence – 3,5 billion characters from a 4-letter alphabet arranged in perfect sequence. Bill Gates describes DNA as a super computer programme. In Genesis, God creates the universe through the spoken word – a deliberate command which is the opposite of an unguided, random process as held by the evolution theory.

 

My explorations and art experiments eventually led me to start working digitally, creating large text images of natural systems. Text becomes a metaphor for the information blueprint underlying every natural system, whilst digital drawing allows a level of intricacy impossible to achieve by hand.  The text in these first images was selected randomly, and contained sections of Scripture that were significant to me personally. 

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Scripture selection: Random