Pollock and fractals

[don dougan <dondougan@zzzzzzzz>]

Norman, Clive, et al,

My two cents on a "fantastic randomness of Pollack"
(a creative misquote)

Though I have been called a "sculpture snob" by some
who have known me (especially after a perception of me
dismissing Michelangelo's Sistine chapel efforts in favor
of his "SCULPTURE"), but the idea of the strokes and
tool marks as being so indicative and identifiable of
the artist (painter) is one I understood only after visiting
the Van Gogh museum about ten years ago.

Among many other of his works on display I saw a
not-particularly famous landscape painting
(sorry, can't remember the title - but perhaps 30" high
by 40" wide) of a field and trees, and with a canal in the
foreground.

Above all these foreground/middleground images was
suspended a cloudless rich-blue-fading-to-white-near-the-horizon
sky made with these very-painterly criss-crossing strokes
running in rows across the breadth of the canvas.  For the
first time (in over thirty years) of looking at Van Gogh's work
I could 'see' him actively painting in my imagination -- really
dancing in front his easel and applying the color-filled brush
to his painting with a joyful abandon of inhibition.  Suddenly I
'got'  what Van Gogh was about in a way I had never
appreciated in looking at his work in reproduction.
The painted sky was merely the vehicle for the joy he felt in
his body as he worked.

It made me (just a lowly sculptor) appreciate the (fairly famous)
painter much more . . .  :-)

Yes, just like handwriting -- fractals?  Hmmm -- you got me.
I am mathematically challenged.

Good Mark-Making to All,
Don

http://www.dondougan.homestead.com/indexdd.html