Patterns and Tessellation
Two years ago, we lost our home and all of our belongings in Hurricane Ian. I lost 15 sketchbooks I had been drawing in for decades. I lost all my early work that I had painted on watercolor paper. I am telling you this because I want to discuss my early work but I have nothing to show. So, I will use words to best describe some of my early discoveries in art, along with a few images of artists I learned from.
I consider myself to be an artist/designer. I did floral fabric design in the early 2000s, and my images tend to be stylized and graphic in nature. This was evident early in my teens. Geometry was one of my favorite subjects in school. I loved using graph paper to plot points and render geometric shapes.
Geometry and my introduction to the art of M.C. Escher influenced my early work. I also learned that I could use a grid for Tessellation, warping shapes, and creating patterns within patterns. I saw (and continue to see) patterns everywhere. In nature, on the large (macro) and microscopic levels, in design both two and three-dimensional, and in the works of other artists.
I would design a grid with repetitive shapes and begin mixing colors and experimenting. There are an infinite number of possible patterns within the tiles. It was an exciting time of personal discovery. This is an image shows some simple tessellation patterns.
Tessellation is a great tool for beginning artists. It originated as a mathematical construct where geometric shapes composed of small pieces of material or color repeat without gaps or overlaps. It then migrated to the art world, where, for example, Islamic art adopted it to decorate mosques and other ceremonial spaces, both large and small. The delivery vehicles for these visual delights were typically colorful mosaic tiles used in complex geometric patterns. In Western Culture, the Dutch artist M.C. Escher is perhaps the best-known example of an artist who used Tessellation as the foundation for his work.
More simply for our purposes here, it is a fun way to create art as you learn. I used it to teach myself about color and how colors operate in a closed system next to each other. I was excited to learn that some colors vibrate visually when they are next to each other. For example, if you look at a primary red set next to a primary green. Or turquoise next to red-orange. Your eyes may never forgive you.
I found this in the artwork of Victor Vaserelly, Richard Anuszkiewicz, and other geometric artists of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Wassily Kandinsky also used a grid to paint circles of color. This is something easy for a beginning artist to use to explore color. I like the looseness of the circles and the variation of brush strokes.
Then, in 2001, I became aware of and inspired to use Chiyogami papers in my paintings. I loved the designs and textures and thought they would add a new dimension and more contrast in my designs.
When I think about it now, it seems like a natural progression from Tessellation to patterned papers.