Tuesday, 30 June 2015

Sacred geometry, sacred rectangles...

Going through a bunch of cards and notes, I came across Andy Black's website address. He was probably one of the many people I've encountered through my work with Octavia Foundation. You may like to see his works by clicking here. As they remind me of my friend's Sylwia Nadgrodkiewicz's  fascination with the 'sacred geometry', I shall quote his artist's statement:
'A/B = B/(A+B)  ...is the algebraic expression of a ratio called the GOLDEN SECTION. Any rectangle whose sides are in proportion A and B, is a Golden Rectangle.
This shape figures prominently in the history of art—from the Greeks to the Modernists—but more interesting is how the ratio connects nature and mathematics. It links the Fibonacci series and the nautilus shell, the sunflower and the pentagram. (At one time, it was even supposed the navel divided the human body, on average, into the Golden Section.)
My images each begin with a compass & straightedge construction of the Golden Section. In time, the strict geometry gives way to a more disordered place. The initial drawing becomes scaffolding—some shapes are emphasized, others obliterated. New forms are painted with a loose hand and far less precision. And the means are reduced: pin and string serve as compass, the slat of a Venetian blind replaces the straightedge.
In these works, accident is important, and so is the materiality of oil paint. Thin washes of pigment and solvent, heavy impasto, fresh paint scraped down to pentimento, the inadvertent drip from an overfull brush—a kind of chaos overlying the order.'

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