My Life With Art

Through most of my life, I have relied strongly on math to provide me with ideas for my artwork. I can remember as far back as first grade, when I did a painting that used strong elements of symmetry. There was heavy use of circles. My teacher praised me for it. For months, that was all I would draw, until the teacher finally in exasperation, I suppose, asked my why I didn't do something else! I guess in my mind, the piece I had been praised for was "safe" in terms of drawing approval. In all art there is this tension between wanting praise and the need to be divergent, where there are risks of not being accepted.

As I thought back over that painting, I decided to do it again! After so many years, I am doing it again! Of course, there is a twist. The original painting was this:

This built strongly on the symmetry of the circle. I returned to it only recently as I thought back over my years with art and math. Even at that early age, geometry played a large role in my conception of art. Today as an adult I return with computers and play with it, building even more complicated work.

I duplicated the drawing and copied it three times, rotating 90 degrees each time. Then the whole figure was copied and rotated 45 degrees. This was done twice, actually, once rotating about the smallest circle and once around the largest circle. here are the results:

Rotated about the largest	Rotated about the smallest

And then I assembled all three into a single illustration