How Mathematics Contributes to Art
Whenever I think of mathematics, which I studied at university, and arts, which I have always been interested in, I wondered why I have been attached to both completely different subjects which have exactly contrasting characteristics at the same time. This curiosity on the relationship between two of my interest fields became my theme of work and I wanted to explore about the influence of mathematics on arts.
My main work is hand painting on ceramics, and it aims to create ingenious beauty in ceramic art using mathematical theories. My works consist of a series created from the first work to the last one. They are developed under the motivation of an Islamic pattern, which is one of the most representative geometric patterns.
All of them are ‘imaging’ expressed by my subjective interpretation of ‘the hidden contributions of mathematics to the art’. Therefore, in each step, I tried to emphasize ‘the unique beauty of the geometric patterns’ by exposing the pencil marks and mathematical constructions to break the stereotypical image of mathematics, and to imply that ‘Mathematics is beautiful.
The idea started with the following thoughts: an ultimate aim of art is ‘The creation of Beauty’, ‘A Flower is one of the symbols of Beauty’ and ‘Art can be finally represented by the Flower’. Through this continuous progress, I would like to show ‘Mathematics is deeply related to the beauty and creation of Artworks’ by drawing the way how ‘A group of circles’, the most fundamental element in mathematics, has finally become ‘A group of flowers’, which symbolise arts. In the last step, by painting the flowers using the perspective, I would like to express the ultimate message of my work: ‘perfectly logical mathematical principles can play an important role in realising the instinctive desire of Art that ceaselessly seek ‘beauty’, and further show that ‘Beautiful Integration’ between two seemingly completely opposite subjects, art and mathematics. (Three mathematical principal s: &lsqu o;Tessellation’, ‘Symmetry’ and ‘Perspective’ are applied in these works.)
