Nine Point Circle.

“Nine Point Circle” There is no circle visible in this work but the shearing of the triangle was made using two of the points from the nine point circle.

The Circle Explanation: The nine point circle is a mathematical phenomenon sometimes referred to as Feuerbach’s Circle, Euler’s circle, Terquem’s circle. Every Triangle has within it and through it a nine point circle.

The nine-point circle is a circle that can be constructed for any given triangle. It is so named because it passes through nine significant concyclic points defined from the triangle. These nine points are:

• The midpoint of each side of the triangle.
• The foot of each altitude.
• The midpoint of the line segment from each vertex of the triangle to the orthocenter (where the three altitudes meet; these line segments lie on their respective altitudes).

 See the diagram of Feurbach's Circle in the additional images.

Not being a mathematician that’s the best I can do with the technical explanation. The  following are my thoughts on making the work.

My thoughts that gave birth to the work:

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two extremities of darkness” this is the opening sentence from Vladimir Nabokov‘s book “Speak, Memory”.

Two paradox’s of my comprehension gave birth to this work and others in the “Opus” series. The first is the idea that the infinite behind me is the same as the infinite in front of me as I move from one to the other and the second is that as some scientists think time did not exist before the “Big Bang”, although theories change all the time. No pun intended!

The two extremities of darkness for me are both infinite, and the small crack of light that is my life I am moving through, so the infinity behind me should be getting bigger and the one in front of me smaller but I am told that the infinite is always the same so can the one behind me remains the same as I get further away from it, no matter how miniscule in the universal eternity that may be.

I am vaguely aware that some scientists say before the “Big Bang” time did not exist but I can’t comprehend that, before the “Big Bang” the entire matter that makes up the universe was supposedly the size of a pea, and in my mind no matter how small anything is it needs space to exist and if it exists there must be duration and so there was always what I would consider time.

Now at this stage many scientist’s and cosmologist’s will be tearing their hair out at my ramblings but these thought whether right or wrong give rise to my thoughts and imaginings and the universe is realized through the thoughts and imaginings of  humanity.

These paradox made me wonder therefore if the “Nine Point Circle” existed before the Big Bang or was the theoretical phenomenon of life born with the physical. In my mind they must always have existed, but then my mind doesn’t half come up with some strange and wild imaginings every now and then, so reader beware!

So here is the simple premise for the work, I created a random triangle which can still be seen, created the nine point circle and using two of the nine points sheared the triangle on those points and then moving out created the pattern which  I then painted. The spacing and colour in the work apart from the shearing distance are completely intuitive and so that aspect of the work mirrors the idea of the universe being imagined by humanity, whilst the pattern is the creation of something that has always existed  imagined by myself.