Lisa Kattchee and Karl Kattchee

The central form in this painting is a combinatorial poppy in the sense of Karl Kattchee's print "45 Poppies" which comprises a classification of all poppies on a 6x6 grid. A poppy is a closed orthogonal path on the grid which proceeds around the center and uses each row and column exactly once. On a 10x10 grid, there are 5180070 asymmetrical poppies, and one of them is depicted here. In the finished painting Lisa Kattchee retained the original grid marks through the use of layers of clear glazes. Other areas are worked up with high texture and rich color through impasto and glazing techniques. The negative space has a life of its own, the scale is ambiguous, and the directness of the mathematical concept is retained.