This is what happens when a designer gets creative in a way we can all understand. Campbell Maloney creates Alphabet Blocks for grown-ups. They invite you to come out and play. A joke is in there… A Russian novel… A love letter… Or not. There is always a puzzle. What you find depends on how long you play. You may figure it out on your own. You might get a clue from another player. Shapes morph into letters, letters into words, words into phrases. The phrases speak to the brain – then to the mind, as a step back refocuses the eye on the simple beauty that caught it in the first place.

Campbell Maloney chose fifteen basic shapes – circles cut systematically – that can be rotated to create all 26 letters of the alphabet. The elegant brilliance of the formula is matched by the striking visual impact of its result. The shapes are arranged and oriented as solitaires, words or collections, equal in size or scaled proportionally and over-imposed.

The designs evoke flatness and depth simultaneously. Large areas of unmodulated color render bold shapes in a planar surface, advancing or receding toward the eye through a clean palette of contrasting warm and cool colors, greys and black. The spatial tension – a visual push-pull – creates an energy within these otherwise solid, stationary geometries.

“I like to think of my work as creating subtle tensions; holding opposites in check. My aim is to create visual designs that are quietly elegant and yet visually arresting – works that whisper as they shout.”

Paintings are acrylic on canvas or raw silk. Prints, created as a series, are limited to an edition of twenty-six. Custom colors and patterns with names or favorite phrases can be applied to paintings, prints, lamps and tables.