 The universe exists in a state of entropy that I was born to fight against...
to turn the chaos into cosmos. I can't understand people who like destruction
and uncertainty.
 I
see regular patterns and structures everywhere and in everything. It gets quite
frustrating at times, because the world being the sort of place it is these
patterns are frequently disrupted or have bits missing. I can't understand how
people could stack cans on a shelf and have them all turned to face different
directions or not arrange their felt tip pens in rainbow order. Somehow that
seems like going against nature and the natural order of things.
 I
can't describe the joy and pleasure I get from just looking at a perfect,
symmetrical, repeating pattern. It is like gazing into the eyes of God. It
brings me great peace.
 I
first discovered this when I got a colouring book called Altair when I was a
small child. It wasn't your usual boring colouring book with pictures of rabbits
and castles, it was just pages of patterns based on principles first discovered
by Arabic Mathematicians in the 10th Century. I spent the next 20 years trying
to find them on sale somewhere again.
 In
the mean time, we briefly encountered such patterns in maths at school. The
afternoon we spent drawing and colouring was one of the most enjoyable lessons I
ever had, but it was over too soon. I knew it was wrong to steal, but every time
I had to get anything from the filing cabinet in the maths room for years after
I would always take a few sheets of the special dotty paper we used so I could
create some more patterns at home. I just couldn't stop myself. Eventually I got
my Dad to photocopy a few hundred of them for me because the school ran out...
 Now,
whenever the world feels like it is in a huge mess I like to colour these
patterns. They totally distract me from every other thought, and that is not
something I can experience often. Normally my mind is buzzing with stuff all the
time. When I colour it goes quiet. You have to focus and concentrate. Sometimes
I colour for hours and hours, and the pictures are so intricate and detailed it
makes my eyes hurt and gives me headaches.
 It's
worth it though, and not because they are great works of art, because they
aren't. They involve minimal creativity and don't always come out looking that
neat close up. It is how they make me feel that is special, and when I say feel
I don't mean emotionally, I mean functionally... a state of being that my brain
can enter.
The designs included here are samples of ones that I produced
from the
Altair
Design Book.
by Suzanne Shaw
Contact the author of this feature
|
