Finding My Words - Michael Vilkin

Oil on canvas

48 × 60 inches (versatile orientation)

Copyright Michael Vilkin

This piece plays in that in-between moment where letters haven’t quite settled into meaning yet. They shift, rearrange, and suddenly click into place—almost by accident.

Directional changes ripple outward into new words. It treats the alphabet like a kind of playground—fluid, a little unpredictable, and always on the edge of becoming something else.

Finding My Words, Poem by Judy Race

So how do letters turn themselves to words? 

And BARDS appears, not BOARDS or BEARDS or BIRDS. 

I look at scattered letters and I find
That words appear whene’er they are combined.  

Take random letters like C R E A
And RACE or CARE or ACRE’s what you say.
Then DEVIL becomes LIVED with sleight of hand
And TEACHER – CHEATER – HECTARE, not as planned.

Now change one letter, HANK is TANK, BANK, SANK, 

Or more, then SHANK or THANK or BLANK or SPANK. 

When forming words, do you want them to rhyme?
(But that’s a matter for another time.)

The alphabet appears before my eyes
And letters become words, to my surprise.