CHAOS THEORY
Ellen Frances:
My work as an artist is rooted in a search for alchemical clarity via the study and practice of unlimited self expression. I utilize a combined practice of automatic writing, sketching, painting, and pull inspiration from my history as a performer in the theater. Stylistically, my work is inspired by classicism and surrealism. The tactile, handmade approach I take when creating each of my pieces is a commentary on the beautiful history of the human spirit's presence in craft. It is also a defiant rebellion against the present-day generative evolution, which seeks to suppress our innate ability to imagine and create freely by an increasingly algorithmic, flattened, artificial world.
Hidden Geometry: Growing up in a Roman Catholic household, the mysterious iconography and symbolism of religious artwork has resonated with me deeply from the onset of my earliest memory. My fascination with the symbolic lexicon extended to the illustrative work of fraternal orders such as Freemasonry; embraced by my favorite luminaries like Newton and Mozart. It was not until more recently, however, that the nexus between my interest in mystical subject matter and my comprehension of mathematical breakdown came into focus with discernible clarity.
In the summer of 2021 I rented a room, by chance, in the 18th c. home of a Taiwanese artist and ancient geometry scholar. It was there, along the Hudson River, beside a 25 acre friary of The Capuchin Order, that I witnessed a quiet dedication to the study of sacred geometry's presence in art and nature. Upon my return to New York City that fall, I began to study patterns in music, movement and painting. I discovered Dali's obsession with "Nuclear Mysticism", post WWII. This period saw Dali return to his Roman Catholic roots via the geometric harmonies of religious iconography. His work of this era drew a direct visual correlation to the mathematical and scientific underpinnings of Einstein's atomic theory - Thus concluding that the atom, as the basic building block of matter, held spiritual significance which could be visualized precisely via geometry. - Further readings included an examination of W.B. Yeats's affiliation with the secret society; The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn. In seminal hermetic-inspired works such as "A Vision," (1925) Yeats employs geometric diagrams as conduits for spiritual revelation. Additionally, writings and illustrations authored by Newton and DaVinci (among others) served as vehicles of understanding for a complex mathematical world. It is a world which I am academically unqualified to decipher, but am enthralled by from a mystical and theoretical perspective.
My interests in scientific visual and spiritual harmony, supported by the theory of the divine in sacred geometry, fuels much of my inquisition into higher modes of cogitation. Yet, in juxtaposition, I find profound aesthetic merit in the deliberate deconstruction of harmonious compositions. A poignant illustration of this is exemplified by the famous comparative analysis of Picasso's "Study for Guitar Sculpture" (1924) and Albrecht Dürer's "Sacred Geometry" (1528). While both are centered on the motif of the guitar, these works display disparate, albeit equally resonant, aesthetic frequencies- Picasso's deconstruction of form portrays a visual and theoretical chaotic fragmentation akin to the division of particles.
Birthed from Chaos: I have traced all mystical and spiritual uses for sacred geometric iconography back to ancient civilization when seeking to understand various realms of existence. Records reveal all mystical icons and human awareness of sacred geometry are derived from Egyptology and the dawn of man. Nature's "divine" engineering proves existence is, fundamentally, harmonious formation. However, when going back further in time beyond "birth", to pre-existence, it seems inevitable we would discover harmony's deconstructed state. We would find such symmetrical harmony is born from chaos. Chaos theory reveals that even within the visible randomness of complex, chaotic systems, there are inherent repetitions, patterns, and anticipated interconnectedness on the verge of powerful formation. This begs the question; is divinity geometric harmony, or is divinity the chaos from which harmony is born? -- It is the all.
