fractal prints and paintings by

ANNE DANIELS

Artist and Mathematician

"The differences in the artistic and the scientific approach to nature fascinate me. I spent ten years learning about applied mathematics, then recently eight years studying art.

My knowledge of classical geometry led me to make my art abstract using methods of reduction and simplification. It is only in the last few years that I have become aware of a new extremely visual geometry, called fractal geometry, which describes nature's complexity, irregularity and fragmentedness, and the self-similar patterns that can be seen on many scales. Obviously a method of abstraction based upon complexity would be much more in line with a fractal view of nature. So in my art I have begun to focus on abstraction not by simplification, but by complication, My most recent etched and painted images model nature by celebrating the fractal qualities of self-similarity and scaling in a dynamic system".

All the artworks in this exhibition were, at one stage in their production, made from blots of ink or paint, and through this blotting process Anne Daniels investigates the structure of nature.

To blot is to make shapes with a liquid on a surface, and thus produce accidental forms without lines, from which ideas are presented to the mind. These ideas conform to nature because nature's forms are not distinguished by lines but by shade and colour. Since an accidental blot will suggest different ideas to different viewers, blotting will tend to stimulate and encourage the powers of invention. Leonardo da Vinci, the artist scientist, suggested assisting invention in this way.

This exhibition is being sponsored by Architecture & Design Services who state:
“We are pleased to be sponsoring “A Blot is the Landscape” as we are particularly interested in reconciling form, function and structure to produce architecture that is aesthetically pleasing as well as functional and buildable.
Anne Daniels’ fascination with exploring fractal like complexity in different forms of printed artwork through experimentation and complication of technique and process is not only visually striking but has a similarity in approach to the work that we do in providing our Clients with buildings and interiors that fulfil their briefs."

Sponsored by