68 Focus I, detail
This site contains a sampling of my paintings, sculpture, and drawings, arranged into several groups; landscapes, seascapes, figures, and so forth. Most of these are self-explanatory, but a few words may be needed for the geometric works.
I left an engineering job in New York City in 1968 to teach mathematics in Vermont. My art soon followed my day job, resulting in a long series of paintings and sculpture based on mathematics and geometry. Many of my geometric works took on celestial and astronomical themes, influenced by the era of space exploration and my engineering work in a company that made astronomical and navigational instruments.
After stumbling naturally into the field of geometric art I discovered that art and mathematics, on the surface so different, are actually closely related. Here’s what others have said about this relationship:
Aristotle "The mathematical sciences in particular exhibit order, symmetry, and limitation; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful."
Rabindranath Tagore: "It is the magic of mathematics, the rhythm which is in the heart of all creation, which moves in the atom, and, in its different measures, fashions gold and lead, the rose and the thorn, the sun and the planets.”
Christopher Wren " . . . always the true test [of beauty] is natural or geometric beauty. Geometrical figures are naturally more beautiful than irregular ones; the square, the circle are most beautiful, next the parallelogram and the oval . . ."
Bertrand Russell "Mathematics possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature . . . sublimely pure, and capable of stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show."
Godfrey H. Hardy "The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or poet's, must be beautiful."
Henri Poincaré "A scientist worthy of the name, above all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impressions as an artist; his pleasure is as great and of the same nature."
William Ivins "Seen in perspective, art, science, and philosophy are expressions of the same basic intuitions.
Kenneth Clarke Vitruvius’ observation that a man’s body fits into those “perfect” geometrical forms, the square and the circle “seemed to offer exactly that link between sensation and order, between an organic and a geometric basis of beauty, which was (and perhaps remains) the philosopher’s stone of aesthetics.”
Howard Levine “Mathematicians and artists are engaged in the ultimate creative activity - creating something out of nothing.”
Statements such as these reinforced my belief that mathematics, a permanent, universal language, with ancient roots, was a valid source of inspiration for art, and that the geometric symbols themselves, iconic, primitive, unconscious, and also universal, were a powerful source of images.
As I became more engrossed in the field, I designed and taught a course at Dartmouth called
Geometry in Art and Architecture
http://www.math.dartmouth.edu/~matc/math5.geometry/
and even wrote a book on the subject,
Squaring the Circle: Geometry in Art and Architecture
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470412127.html
Completing the circle, the course and the book then became sources for another cycle of geometric works.
I left an engineering job in New York City in 1968 to teach mathematics in Vermont. My art soon followed my day job, resulting in a long series of paintings and sculpture based on mathematics and geometry. Many of my geometric works took on celestial and astronomical themes, influenced by the era of space exploration and my engineering work in a company that made astronomical and navigational instruments.
After stumbling naturally into the field of geometric art I discovered that art and mathematics, on the surface so different, are actually closely related. Here’s what others have said about this relationship:
Aristotle "The mathematical sciences in particular exhibit order, symmetry, and limitation; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful."
Rabindranath Tagore: "It is the magic of mathematics, the rhythm which is in the heart of all creation, which moves in the atom, and, in its different measures, fashions gold and lead, the rose and the thorn, the sun and the planets.”
Christopher Wren " . . . always the true test [of beauty] is natural or geometric beauty. Geometrical figures are naturally more beautiful than irregular ones; the square, the circle are most beautiful, next the parallelogram and the oval . . ."
Bertrand Russell "Mathematics possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature . . . sublimely pure, and capable of stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show."
Godfrey H. Hardy "The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or poet's, must be beautiful."
Henri Poincaré "A scientist worthy of the name, above all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impressions as an artist; his pleasure is as great and of the same nature."
William Ivins "Seen in perspective, art, science, and philosophy are expressions of the same basic intuitions.
Kenneth Clarke Vitruvius’ observation that a man’s body fits into those “perfect” geometrical forms, the square and the circle “seemed to offer exactly that link between sensation and order, between an organic and a geometric basis of beauty, which was (and perhaps remains) the philosopher’s stone of aesthetics.”
Howard Levine “Mathematicians and artists are engaged in the ultimate creative activity - creating something out of nothing.”
Statements such as these reinforced my belief that mathematics, a permanent, universal language, with ancient roots, was a valid source of inspiration for art, and that the geometric symbols themselves, iconic, primitive, unconscious, and also universal, were a powerful source of images.
As I became more engrossed in the field, I designed and taught a course at Dartmouth called
Geometry in Art and Architecture
http://www.math.dartmouth.edu/~matc/math5.geometry/
and even wrote a book on the subject,
Squaring the Circle: Geometry in Art and Architecture
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470412127.html
Completing the circle, the course and the book then became sources for another cycle of geometric works.