Statement
“Whatever rests on the foundations of life is good, when new formation and preservation each find themselves in the other. Let us therefore, think not of form, but of the act of forming.”
Paul Klee
My research focuses on an exploration of pattern recognition within organic form and an understanding of the veiled unity and universal underlying structure within nature’s complexity. The evocation of nature in the manner in which it is experienced rather than by direct representation is of particular interest to me. The images revolve around rhythms and growth patterns creating a space that exists as a site of mystery, regeneration and metamorphosis.
Drawing equally from the traditional form of wood block printing, where the single continuous line is often employed to fashion form, and from the essential principles of print media, i.e. the multiple and repeated image, my practice investigates processes of recursion; repetition and layering that coalesce to weave together natural forms held together by an almost imperceptible structure. Combining photographic and drawn images of the organic, the work exists at the edge of chaos, with tangled or flowing lines pushing and pulling at themselves to create the sensuous irregularity and unpredictability that is the signature of our physical environment.
The forms are holistic in the sense that everything affects everything else with many parts feeding back into each other. Some images are self-similar, a characteristic of fractals (forms with detailed structure on every scale of magnification) describing symmetry across scale, implying recursion, pattern within pattern. Taken together, self-similarity and holism are employed to fashion forms that mirror and metaphorically invoke the patterned mysteries of the natural world.
In my investigation of the constituent parts of complexity, I have been led to reduce my forms to a series of rhythmically repeated units. A form of ‘articulation’, of building up the work through the varied repetition of basic germinal elements, such as a single drawing, with the result that the images often seem simultaneously simple and intricate, skirting a fine line between order and chaos. It is the intersection of the two that is particularly appealing, creating a tension composed of similarities and differences that gives birth to lucid ambiguities. Order and chaos are what you choose to isolate or frame, a synthesis of figuration and semblance.
The natural world describes a perfect harmony of order and disorder. In the way that fractals are a way of visualizing chaotic behaviors, the forms I create are a visual exploration of the nature of complexity, rooted in the iteration or repetition of simple rules and simple processes. Complexity cannot be truly comprehended without a conviction of its underlying simplicity. Order and chaos are often thought to be polar opposites, yet a new form of chaos may be explored that is not just something in the middle, a splitting of the difference, it may be a third pole.
Paul Klee
My research focuses on an exploration of pattern recognition within organic form and an understanding of the veiled unity and universal underlying structure within nature’s complexity. The evocation of nature in the manner in which it is experienced rather than by direct representation is of particular interest to me. The images revolve around rhythms and growth patterns creating a space that exists as a site of mystery, regeneration and metamorphosis.
Drawing equally from the traditional form of wood block printing, where the single continuous line is often employed to fashion form, and from the essential principles of print media, i.e. the multiple and repeated image, my practice investigates processes of recursion; repetition and layering that coalesce to weave together natural forms held together by an almost imperceptible structure. Combining photographic and drawn images of the organic, the work exists at the edge of chaos, with tangled or flowing lines pushing and pulling at themselves to create the sensuous irregularity and unpredictability that is the signature of our physical environment.
The forms are holistic in the sense that everything affects everything else with many parts feeding back into each other. Some images are self-similar, a characteristic of fractals (forms with detailed structure on every scale of magnification) describing symmetry across scale, implying recursion, pattern within pattern. Taken together, self-similarity and holism are employed to fashion forms that mirror and metaphorically invoke the patterned mysteries of the natural world.
In my investigation of the constituent parts of complexity, I have been led to reduce my forms to a series of rhythmically repeated units. A form of ‘articulation’, of building up the work through the varied repetition of basic germinal elements, such as a single drawing, with the result that the images often seem simultaneously simple and intricate, skirting a fine line between order and chaos. It is the intersection of the two that is particularly appealing, creating a tension composed of similarities and differences that gives birth to lucid ambiguities. Order and chaos are what you choose to isolate or frame, a synthesis of figuration and semblance.
The natural world describes a perfect harmony of order and disorder. In the way that fractals are a way of visualizing chaotic behaviors, the forms I create are a visual exploration of the nature of complexity, rooted in the iteration or repetition of simple rules and simple processes. Complexity cannot be truly comprehended without a conviction of its underlying simplicity. Order and chaos are often thought to be polar opposites, yet a new form of chaos may be explored that is not just something in the middle, a splitting of the difference, it may be a third pole.