Delta
July 2005, 40.5x30.5cm, Acrylic and glue on box canvas
This is a painting of an imagined river delta seen from above, not of a tree on a hill.
It seems easier to see the painting as a tree on a hill as this is the kind of view we are more familiar with.
I am fascinated by the occurrence of similar patterns in nature at different scales.
Just as the pattern of a river delta is reminiscent of a tree, trees and root structures are
eerily similar to neuronal dendrites.
Numerous other resemblances between large and small scale morphology can be recognised from aerial photographs;
blood vessels and the path of rivers, the crystalline structure of fields and cities,
and of course, the spiral reflecting the 'golden ratio' seen throughout nature.
There is no mystery to these relationships; it is simply applied mathematics,
yet it hints at the underlying structure of the universe that links the large and the small,
and shows humanity as simply another manifestation of the laws of nature.
