Geometrizeths
2024 Stromboli Fresco secco on cast plaster, 420 x 500 mm
This collection of works appropriates the word geometrizeth from Thomas Browne’s The garden of Cyprus (1658), which contains theoretical hypotheses concerning patterns in nature. The repetition of forms in the cosmos was an early human concern of pre-Socratic philosophers, such as Anaximander (c.610-546 BCE), investigating the macrocosm–microcosm analogy - within mathematics it was explored by a series of geniuses, including: Leonardo Fibonacci in Liber abaci (1202); Leonardo da Vinci in Trattato della pittura [A Treatise on Painting], (1452–1519); and more recently by Alan Turin (1912-1954) and Benoit Mandelbrot (1912-2010), with his fractal geometry. Geometrizeths are artworks in which the topography of natural surfaces are used to prompt the artist’s ‘core object recognition’ to realise an original landscape image based on known or embedded memory, a notion previously proposed by Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001) as a significant factor in the motivation of prehistoric cave painters. The development of geometrizeths has been a long term project for the artist since the 1990’s and this corpus is the first public exposure of the works. This series has been created by making moulds of ancient Umbrian olive trees and then casting them in plaster supported with jute linen, a technique that was in use at least 4,500 years ago. The moulds have been allowed to crack, prior to casting, producing fragmented, almost fossilised, compositions to symbolise the fragility of the natural world - in some cases this delicacy is further highlighted by their re-union using the Japanese kintsugi technique, deploying gold leaf to emphasise their value. Some areas have been painted using natural pigments tempered with egg yolk - in this way they are ‘painted landscapes’ rather than ’landscape paintings’.