The Script series of paintings comes about from Lisa’s interest in Runes and other ancient languages.  She had the thought - What if some of the most famous and recognisable poems and prose from literature had actually originated from earlier times and were to be discovered written on ancient manuscripts or hewn into stone in some arcane language?

The written word has not existed for as long as is generally thought. The depiction of numbers, or numerology, has existed for approximately 40,000 years, beginning with notches or tally marks being carved into bones.  Cave paintings and graffiti marks on rocks also date from the same period but the written word, as a set of visible or tactile marks to depict language in a systematic way, is thought to have only developed in approximately 3,500 BC independently in different parts of the world; mainly Sumaria and Egypt. The Egyptians attributed the gift of writing to the God Thoth; in Mesopotamia, the Sumarians to the God Enlil. To these ancient civilisations, writing appeared to be Devine in origin as it allowed for memory to be extended indefinitely and for tribal culture and history; which could previously only be passed onto future generations verbally; to be transcribed into a physical existence and retained forever.

Lisa’s preferred text for her script paintings is to use a runic alphabet. These originate from early Norse/Germanic origins, with the earliest inscriptions from around 150 AD. Initially, the paintings used Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVIII (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day) and the Roman poet Virgil’s epic Latin poem Aeneid.  The concept has been picked up by several commissions where clients have proposed their favourite literature pieces and have them rendered in this way. Among these have been W. H. Auden’s 12 Songs ('Stop all the clocks') and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese (‘How Do I Love Thee’), both intended to commemorate significant anniversaries.  Scripts can be produced in either Oil or Watercolour.