Artist’s Statement
Mark A. Reynolds
Compositions
Pierogi Gallery
June, 2013
Light is to the Natural World as Abstract Space is to Geometry.
– Robert Grosseteste 1112
Where there is mathematical form, there is consciousness and spirit, and there is the hope of an experience with the Eternal. When mind encounters this mathematical form, it often takes the form of geometric constructions and harmonic systems.
– Mark A. Reynolds, 2012
Many of the drawings in the Pierogi show are taken from different meldings of systems of geometry that are not related or numerically commensurate, and attempting to make them so. I call these compositions, ‘Marriages of Incommensurables’, and some of them, ‘Unions of Opposites’. I am interested in the structures and the images – the forms – that result from these meldings.
I also explore the armatures of specific ratios found, for example, in the whole number/musical ratios, the golden section family of ratios, and the square root rectangle series. Sometimes, I look into the more unknown ratios within these three families, or I may invent ratios of my own that I find intriguing.
Great care is given to the drawing because I want to know exactly what the relationship will look like, what it will become, what harmonies, tonal qualities, or discordant passages it will contain. These structures have never been seen before, even though the history of geometry goes back probably to the beginning of time itself. The nature of geometry is to compose. Each resulting composition is uniquely harmonic by the method in which it was drawn and what was chosen to be the unifying geometric principle for that drawing. Much depends on this original marriage, what specifically was being employed in the geometric construction involved in the union. Certain principles of geometry – ratios, proportioning systems, harmonic resonances or discordances – interface within the relationship. I make it visible by drawing the resulting geometric forms.
Approaching the geometry this way is also an exciting journey into the world of geometry that is so old as to be eternal. We don’t know when or where the forming of geometry first took place, and what the nature of the creative forces were that brought geometry into our universe. I do know that drawing these various systems of geometric structures is exciting, meditative, exhilarating, and humbling.