Masha du Toit

A fairly recent drawing that did not go quite as planned:

I was able to generate quite a few patterns from this drawing. I’m fairly sure that these shapes are inspired by my reading of Kim Stanley Robinson’s  Red Mars that I’d just finished, and Green Mars that I’m still reading.  There is a lot of detail about mutating algae and other microscopic plants in the effort to terraform Mars.

In a previous post I quoted from Green Mars – Hiroko explains her understanding of pattern in nature.  Here is a quote about different ways of understanding the world – the scientific, and the poetic:

The little boy Nirgal has been speaking to the ultra-rational scientist Sax Russel, and trying to fit Sax’s explanation of reality with Hiroko’s spiritual approach.  Sax says:

“And I want to understand why it happens the way it does.  I’m curious.  And I think that everything happens for a reason.  Everything.  So, we should be able to tease these reasons out.  When we can’t,…well, I don’t like it.  It vexes me.  Sometimes I call it  – ” he glanced at Nirgal shyly, and Nirgal saw that he had never told this to anyone before – ” I call it the great unexplainable.”

It was the white world, Nirgal saw suddenly.  The white world inside the green, the opposite of Hiroko’s green world inside the white.  And they had opposite feelings about them.  Looking from the green side, when Hiroko confronted something mysterious, she loved it and it made her happy – it was viriditas, a holy power.  Looking from the white side, when Sax confronted something mysterious, it was the Great Unexplainable, dangerous and awful.  He was interested in the true, while Hiroko was interested in the real.  Or perhaps it was the other way round – those words were tricky.”

So here are some more patterns, the interface between the green world and the white. With admittedly some influence of Tim Burton’s Nightmare before Christmas.