Françoise Beck-Pieterhons
Artists
Statement
Free-lance writer and Italianist, I express in animal painting my immense love and respect for our so-called 'inferior' friends. In a math-art community, why not try to capture participants' interest to aspects of animality close to mathematics, through the emotional appeal of the painting medium ?
Artworks
An Eye into Zebra Geometry
300 X 300 mm
Acrylic paint on canvas
2011
Animal skins come in a huge variety of patterns, some with high geometrical content. The regular, rhythmical black and white alternation of the Zebra skin stripes keeps provoking a special visual fascination, that naturally extends to the arts. Even a browse through Bridges math-art catalogues reveals many geometrical patterns reminding one of animal skins. A striking example admired last year during a visit to the Pécs Vasarely Museum was that emblematic work with his entangled 'Zebras'. It is not widely known that these various patterns have been investigated for a very long time, and that in the preceding century quite an extensive number of scientific studies have been conducted, underpinned by complex mathematics describing chemical and biological realities that trace back to the evolution of embryos as the very genesis of strange regular skin patterns. Who would believe Alan Turing et al. had a considerable influence in this domain also? (After detail photo F. Rumpenhorst.)