Theo Schaad
I fell in love with geometry at a young age. Over the years I have discovered many Escheresque tilings and later quasiperiodic tessellations. A decorated version of the Penrose tiling hangs in the Physics Department of the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. The year of the pandemic has given me almost unlimited time to follow my passion.
This acrylic painting is an example of a quasiperiodic tessellation that features local motifs. The pattern was constructed with another artist and mathematician, Peter Stampfli (https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.06046). There are only three base tiles: a square, a triangle, and a rhomb. Unlike exact computer-generated patterns, hand-painting gives artistic liberty to emphasize certain features. The main motif is a 12-fold rosette. A second motif is a dodecagon filled with squares, rhombs, and triangles. A third motif consists of squares surrounded by four triangles. What I love about this pattern is the blend of symmetries and the balance between a perceived fore- and background. How many different regular dodecagons are in the picture?