Language is one of my favourite things. I take great pleasure in the use of language. It is one of the defining items of humankind, of society. In rich diversity we have developed, evolved, and designed our languages as a means of mutual understanding, of our communicating our thoughts to one another. Our languages have great capacity to amuse, to inspire, to comfort, to bring to tears or laughter, to provide hope, to educate, or simply as I am doing to just ramble though some half-defined ideas.

I love the sounds of language, French especially, even though my understanding of the tongue of such luminaries as Zola, Dumas and Verne is limited thanks to the English Education system of which I was a mediocre pupil.

Gaelic to, perhaps the first language to be spoken in these islands, has an equal fascination for me. It has a rich, redolent pronunciation, an echo of a time when the written word was undeveloped and oral traditions were the means by which history, legends and the great sagas were passed forward.

However, I have had the luxury and benefit over the years of working with a number of people from differing backgrounds and origins, French, Dutch, Polish, Iranian and South African. All have in some way added to my appreciation of language, not as a universal medium, but each as an individual to be savoured and if possible learned.

So it should be no surprise to anyone reading this, that I take an inordinate delight in finding well written books, magazine articles or poems. Shakespeare is a superb case in point. His works, although intended for the Elizabethan stage, are full of rich, eloquent and evocative language. Reading Shakespeare is as much a pleasure as watching a performance, sometimes more so, as with the words themselves we have no actors to employ an interpretation of the characters speech and therefore the language itself reigns upon the stage of our minds. In comparison, I find with the appreciation of Shakespeare, an echo, however distant, of the Gaelic speaking peoples oral traditions.

Therefore, it should also be no great surprise that I find the deterioration in the use of language as an anathema. What use of language gave to the world in such beautiful prose as shown in The American Declaration of Independence (*See below), modern usage has bypassed, in favour of banal, simplistic, easily understood sound bites or crass poorly defined vocabularies.

As a painter of miniatures I find that the use of language is vital for me to explain concepts, techniques, principles or ideas.

The adage states that;

A picture is worth a thousand words.

But I contend that with a thousand words, a picture can be defined more accurately, more completely than the image alone can provide.

(*But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security…..

The English language used in all its complexity and glory.)