Artist Statement: My work uses the graceful lines and sensuous forms of Amharic calligraphy to create visual poetry. Amharic is one of the major modern languages of Ethiopia and one of the few languages native to Africa that has a written system. I am the first contemporary Ethiopian painter to explore the aesthetic dimensions of Amharic calligraphy as abstract design in visual expression.

I have been working with Amharic calligraphy for more than 25 years. In the early days, my works were much more decorative and played strongly within the confines of two-dimensionality. The language taught me, however, of its volume, its beauty, its texture and of the vastness of its expression – beyond conventional meanings of words. Over the years, by breaking the symbols into pieces, distorting and exaggerating them, then reshaping them into new forms, I discovered they have life. They are in everything I see. They are beautiful women, harmonious architecture, colorful textiles. They are sensuous and erotic: they breathe on the canvas, they dance to rhythms of drums and African-American jazz. In their humanness and spirituality, they mimic African masks and wood carvings. They are celebrations, rituals, birth, life and death.