The Meander

From The Book of the Dead texts, Gates fashioned two very simple iconographic designs for The Meander paintings.  The first is a meander pattern, itself, which borders and bisects each painting, making two rectangles, one above the other.  The second is an hourglass shape that dominates both rectangles: in one the hourglass shape is vertical and in the other, horizontal.  The drawing for each painting was made as similar as possible.  Their colors distinguish the paintings.

The meander shape came when the artist stepped outside his studio and noticed that the design on the mummy cases that he was studying was remarkably similar to the meander design on the hallway floor in the Livestock Exchange Building, in Kansas City, where he had a temporary studio.  The hourglass shape arrived, after countless trials and errors, from his desire for a shape with the feel of an Egyptian glyph that, also, had no recognizable Egyptian heritage.

And, finally, by intent, the artist wants the purpose of any spell that the paintings may cast–The Book of the Dead texts are combinations of the spells required to enter the afterlife–to be entirely in the eye of the beholder.