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Chaos, Beauty
& Mathematics
Where is the
line between art and scientific representation?
An evaluation of Taylor Smith's
art in terms of her interest in science, nature
and mathematics reveals the core of her creative
inspiration: the inevitable tension between the ideal of
objective observation and the specificities of color, space, mathematics
and the limitations of human understanding. Taylor Smith is best known
for her abstract paintings incorporating wine and coffee. But while
she pursues her art with the existential sound and fury of
Abstract Expressionism, it is now clear that her ambitions are
more contemplative, leading to works that increasingly
present the complexities of the natural world through the
lens of geometry and mathematics.
Identifying Smiths interest
in nature and mathematics is really just a beginning. In all
of the different ways that the artist has drawn on learned
sciences, her work inevitably carries traces of her own
particular experience. In many of her works, Smith graphs out
number-structure patterns and abstract geometric calculations on canvas
and paper behind the paint and this forms the basis for her art. Although
often obscured by the visual work, the mathematical foundation is ever present.
These are her most purely mathematical works, yet even here it is
precisely the chaos of color and line coupled with the abstract ideal of pure mathematical
structure that makes them powerful art.
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