Andrew Werth

Statement

My paintings are constructed through a slow, deliberate process that consists of thousands of individual brushstrokes applied one at a time. The marks provide a structure in which to explore perceptual effects and the interaction of color. I design interactions between underpainting and mark making and between foreground and background at multiple levels of abstraction. Many of my paintings use mathematical ideas such as Turing patterns, fractals, or tessellations as a starting point for artistic departure. I strive to create paintings where the viewer will want to keep looking, from near and afar, from different angles and in different lighting, always finding something new to stimulate the eye and the mind.

Artworks

A digital 2D drawing of a hypercube served as the initial "seed" image for simulating a reaction-diffusion process in Photoshop to generate a Turing Pattern. Along the way, Photoshop filters such as "twirl" added extra dynamism to the design, which is roughly symmetric around a 180-degree rotation. The resulting pattern was used for composing the painting which consists of gradients of color in both the underpainting and the mark-filled top layer.

Sierpinski triangles are reflected, rotated, and superimposed to generate this painting's composition. The underpainting of bright and dark reds interacts with hand-painted gradients of thousands of blue and yellow marks to create a figure with depth and visual ambiguity.