Judith Copithorne: A Portrait of Nothing
The Letter O . c. 2009 In 2009–2010, I was mesmerized by Judith Copithorne’s work during my graduate studies with Canadian poet Professor Gregory Betts. Greg (and his circle of remarkable colleagues) introduced me to a visual world I previously knew almost nothing about. It was a creatively life-changing experience, and I found myself hungrily chasing down both historical and then-current works. As an artist whose career has largely focused on drawing, I was naturally drawn to Judith’s early works, which feature a confluence of serpentine drawn and written elements. There was something “different” about her work—something that stood apart from much of what I was pursuing at the time—and I kept digging. Eventually, I encountered her 2009 work The Letter O . A later-career digital piece, The Letter O is unique within Copithorne’s canon, standing apart from both her earlier analogue works and her later digital output—almost a “one-off,” if you will. The serpentine linear elements present...