Painting Flowers has an extraordinary history. For millennia Chinese artists used floral subjects to decorate ceramics, textiles, and paintings. Eventually Europeans would catch up. Caravaggio presented an early isolated basket of flowers. By 1600 Jan Brueghel the Elder made images … Continued

1565 found Pieter Bruegel in his studio painting one of the earliest snow landscapes recorded in Europe (example 1). He was painting each of the seasons, a topical idea at the time.  A century later Poussin would repeat the theme … Continued

Depicting Infinity across time and cultures often emerges as a circle. Before European contact Aztec depictions of the Cosmos and calendar (example 1) appear as circles within circles even as they circumscribe other geometric patterns.  6000 years ago one of … Continued

In Vienna toward the close of the 19th century artists like Gustav Klimt found decorative patterns as a new muse. Eventually, this fascination blossomed into the Jugenstil, or new style (the art nouveau).  For source materials Klimt looked to the … Continued

Because we are born diurnal, edge-detecting, break-spotters whose vision depends upon memory as much as incoming retinal data and, because we are born looking for familiar simple patterns and, because our eyes refocus 4 to 3 times per second building … Continued