Naïve and Sentimental Painting
The title for this group of paintings alludes to an essay by the German playwright, poet, and philosopher Friedrich Schiller: On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry (1795). Schiller identified two fundamental creative impulses: the spontaneous and unfiltered naïve, and the self-conscious and reflective sentimental. (In his terms “sentiment" was akin to “realist” and was associated with the loss of the naïve.) To approach birds, flowers, butterflies, snails, etc., from the naïve standpoint is impossible; these paintings, then, combine my personal, unfiltered relationship to the natural world with counter impulses towards analytical reserve.
Flowers are a Beautiful Mathematics; Fibonacci Echinacea with Monarch Butterflies
2023
Acrylic on linen mounted on cradled wood panel
36 x 36 inches
"Flowers are a beautiful mathematics" is a line by the Spanish proto-modernist poet Salvador Rueda (1857-1933) whose inspiration was the universality of patterns and structures in nature. At the center of each large flower is a geometric rendering of a Fibonacci mathematic spiral. This complex pattern occurs naturally in Echinacea purpurea, or coneflowers. The coneflowers are paired with butterflies whose intricate markings echo the geometric complexities of the Fibonacci pattern, the radial pattern amplified by a secondary ring of smaller airborne forms.