Suman Vaze
Through my work, I seek to understand both mathematics and art better. These works reference Joseph Albers book Interaction of Color and use Puzzle No 8 from James Tanton’s book More Without Words to investigate the interaction of colour. I have used the puzzle’s structure to do an inquiry into painting layers of squares of different sizes and colours.
The painting is constructed with adjacent squares of different colour so that the diagonals of the squares trace the ricocheting path of a ball shot at an angle of 45° from one corner of the canvas. In an m x n rectangle where m and n are relatively prime, the number of straight paths of the ball before it falls into a corner is m + n - 1. This is therefore the number of squares required to complete the picture. A 24”x20” canvas requires 10 adjacent squares to be painted. Using 3 colours it is possible to paint the picture in 6 different ways. I have used pink, yellow and white to create a complete set of six works, only two of which are shown at this exhibition. Drips and smudges are intentionally left in.