March 5 - April 28, 2021

Providence, RI - Periphery Space @ Paper Nautilus is pleased to announce Vesica Piscis an exhibition by Susanne Delatour Carey featuring drawings and paintings which start with the simple shape of a circle.

Once a system has been put into place, like a serial ordering of circles, rhythm takes over and proceeds as a natural force. Systems can be seen as a way to avoid subjective decision-making, yet Carey's paintings are far from being impersonal or objective. Instead, the grid created by layering circles acts as a process; one thing leads to another. The result could be predictable, that is, until she starts painting. The framework of lines serves as a starting point. Her interventions leverage the grid's energy and give the work its own dimension and vocabulary, providing an insight into her painting practice.

An excerpt from Carey’s artist statement reads: In this series, I have been using six-fold symmetry as a method to organize my intentions for the picture plane before I begin to apply color. Using only a compass and a straight edge, I find the center and build a pattern starting from a single circle. Once I have the underlying grid, I can further build upon the structure or subtract from it. Initially, I try to establish a few simple parameters, for example, only using two colors or only using primary colors. Still, as the picture develops, I give over more to my intuitive process.

An except from our conversation These pieces are about making flat patterns and finding the beautiful secrets and forms embedded in the design.[…] I love the idea that anyone with a pencil, paper, compass, and a straight edge, can render the elements of matter with no prior knowledge of math and that math […] can create something that is so visually beautiful.

Artist Statement

Vesica Piscis: a type of lens, a mathematical shape formed by the intersection of two disks with the same radius, intersecting in such a way that the center of each disk lies on the perimeter of the other

In this series, I start with a six-fold symmetry pattern, or a lattice grid pattern, to organize my intentions for the picture plane. Using only a compass and a straight edge, I find the center point, and build the design from a single circle. Once I have the underlying grid, I can further build upon the structure or subtract from it. Initially, I establish a few simple parameters, for example, only using two colors or only using primary colors, but as the picture develops, I default to my intuitive process. The lines I have drawn are guides, not rules, and the points created are a reference’s which I use to navigate the picture plane. Sometimes I discover relics excavated from the archeological dig of my subconscious, while other times, it's more like adjusting the lens of a telescope to capture the image of a cosmic aberration. I let the image reveal itself to me. By manipulating the viewers' perception and creating the illusion of a three-dimensional solid or a receding space out of two-dimensional shapes, while leaving some of the two-dimensional pattern exposed, the esoteric mysteries of Euclidean mathematics are revealed in the exoteric observation of the artist's process. I invite the viewer to participate in the knowledge and experience of what is all around us on a personal level. Geometry becomes a bridge between human-made constructions and the harmony and unity of nature. When we connect our personal experience with the universal experience, it becomes the collective spiritual consciousness.

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Susanne Delatour Carey lives and works in Westport, Massachusetts. She grew up in Chappaqua, New York and received her Bachelor's Degree in painting and sculpture from Bennington College. For over a decade Susanne had studio space in New Bedford, first at The Cummings Building on Williams St., and later on Orchard St, in the Howland Mill complex. Susanne has exhibited at Judith Klein Gallery, Colo Colo Gallery, Gallery X, The Rope Works Gallery, and The Pour Farm Tavern Gallery. She has participated several years in the Open Studios New Bedford, and Open Studios South Coast tour. In addition, her work has been exhibited at The Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River, MA, Westport Artists Group, Westport, MA and The Producer’s Club, in New York City. Susanne now works from her home studio on the Westport River.

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A conversation between Susanne Delatour Carey and Barbara Owen on the occasion of Susanne’s show Vesica Piscis at Paper Nautilus in Providence, Rhode Island. April 2021

Barbara Owen: In your artist statement, you talk about using six-fold symmetry as a technique "to organize my intentions for the picture plane before applying color." As an artist with a long history of painting abstractly, can you tell us how you came to be interested in using a geometric grid and vesica piscis as a process?

Susanne Delatour Carey: When I make an abstract painting, I let my intuition and aesthetic sensibility lead me, but I wanted to understand better what I thought I knew intuitively. I decided to deconstruct my process by limiting my options to isolate and explore the basic elements of composition individually. I limited my palette and simplified my forms until I was drawing circles and squares in red, white, and black or repeating shapes using only primary colors. As the work became more geometric, balance and accuracy became more important. I was having issues with centering my forms until I realized that canvases are never perfectly square due to the unstable nature of wood and canvas. Measuring from the edges of a canvas would never be accurate, so the only way was to find the relative center and measure out. Without using the edges, the solution was to use a compass and a straight edge. My high school knowledge of geometry was pretty rusty, so I searched books on geometry, and that's how I discovered Euclidian Geometry, or Sacred Geometry, as it is known in the mystic sense. Starting with a point and drawing a circle with a compass, you can create any shape, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional, that exists in nature. When you add color and texture, whether you choose to make a pattern, the possibilities are infinite.

BO: In our conversation about your paintings, you said the dot is symbolic of and is referred to as the "seed of creation." Can you expand on this?

SDC: The dot is both the point of origin and the point of conclusion. It is both the beginning and the end. It has no dimension but carries all the possibilities of the universe within it. The dot is referred to as The Seed of Creation. Many religions and cultures all over the world have symbolic references for the dot. For example, In Hinduism, a dot called the Bindhi is placed on the forehead, at the position of the third eye, which is believed to be the seat of the soul. When the dot is extended into a line and connected back to itself in a continuous arc, you get a circle. With no beginning and no end, the circle is unassailable. The circle is created from something (the unbroken line) and nothing (the empty center and the space around it). Again, there is a commonality across cultures and religions that suggests the circle is a symbol for both Spirit and Matter, The Universe, or even God.

The Greek philosopher Empedocles said, "God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere." A compass set to the radius of a circle, and placed anywhere on the circle's circumference, will divide the arc of the circumference into six equal arcs. This is known as six-fold symmetry. The six-fold symmetry pattern is the foundation for the Hexagonal Lattice Pattern, also known as the Matrix pattern. It is sometimes referred to as the Flower of Life pattern or The Matrix of Nature. Within this hexagonal lattice pattern can be found the design for everything from molecules to music. All this begins with a single point on a blank plane.

BO: What do the shapes that you arrive at mean to you? What are these shapes?

SDC: I have only begun to scratch the surface of the complexity of making shapes and forms using six-fold symmetry. I have already discussed the circle, but all the other two-dimensional shapes are there; the triangle, the square, the rectangle, the hexagon. The Vesica Piscis is the shape created by overlapping two circles of equal circumference at their centers. There are volumes on the Vesica Piscis (also known as the Double Reuleaux Triangle). It is first mentioned in Euclid's Elements (300bc). In mathematics, it is the first step in drawing an equilateral triangle. Due to its strength, the Vesica Piscis is used extensively to construct the medieval arches of the great cathedrals and temples in Gothic and Byzantine Architecture. The Reuleaux triangle, which is obtained by adding a third circle, is used frequently in engineering. The most recognized Vesica Piscis as a religious symbol is the Christian fish and the Holy Trinity. Still, it is also found in Egyptian culture, as in the Eye of Osiris and Hinduism, the symbol for the vagina or Yoni.

Also contained in the Hexagonal lattice pattern is Metatron's Cube. Named for God's scribe, the archangel Metatron, It is of interest to scientists, mathematicians, musicians, artists, mystics, and conspiracy theorists alike. Metatron's Cube is a geometric structure, built with a six-fold symmetry pattern, composed of thirteen equal circles. By drawing intersecting lines from the centers of each of the thirteen circles to each other, you will every single point needed to construct every pattern made by man or made in nature, all of the geometric shapes, and the five Platonic solids: the tetrahedron, the Cube, the octahedron, the icosahedron, and the dodecahedron. Though representations of these three-dimensional shapes date back to the fifth century BC, they are named for the Athenian philosopher Plato, who assigned these shapes to the five elements that he supposed formed all matter: fire, earth, air, water, and heaven; they are known in mathematics as the regular polyhedrons and consist of three-dimensional shapes constructed of identical polygons meeting at the same three-dimensional angle. These polyhedrons make up everything from crystals to human DNA, the formation and movement of celestial objects. I love the idea that anyone with a pencil, paper, compass, and a straight edge, can render the elements of matter with no prior knowledge of math and that math and science can create something that is so visually beautiful.

BO: How does your work relate to current social and political issues, if you think it does?

SDC: I do think it does. However, I don't think anything regarding the current social and political situation is new. I believe we have been in this place repeatedly since the beginning of what we call "civilization." I am not alone in the theory that the dawn of civilization was the downfall of civilization. When humankind settled down and began taming the animals and farming the land, it was the end of an egalitarian society and the beginning of the hierarchal community. The man with more land, more crops, more livestock can wield more power and rise in the hierarchy. It created an imbalance. Like the dot, it is both the beginning and the end. The matrix pattern is universal. It is in everything that exists on a molecular level. It is a great unifier. Geometry is also about knowledge and education. Numbers, Geometry, Music, and the study of the heavens were considered the four Great Liberal Arts in the ancient world. The sign above the entrance to Plato's Academy said: "Let none who enter here be ignorant of geometry." Plato introduced the idea that an understanding of a class of entities he called "forms," principally "Justice," "Truth," and "Equality," was essential to the understanding of ethics and creating an equal, just and productive society. I think that the world today is in desperate need of that kind of understanding.

BO: What themes do you navigate in your work?

SDC: These pieces are about making flat patterns and finding the beautiful secrets and forms embedded in the design. After I draw the design, I can use colors to emphasize rhythms or objects. Depending on the values and hues I choose, or what lines I choose to reveal or hide, I can create the illusion of a three-dimensional object within the two-dimensional pattern. I can show movement or stillness or advancing or receding space. I often leave areas of the pattern alone so the viewer can see the construction. I'm not trying to hide the process or obscure the reality of the illusion. I like the viewers to understand that simple lines can become a shape or a pattern and how the illusions of space and time are rendered on a flat surface. For many, Both Art and Geometry can seem so esoteric and mysterious. Mathematics, music, visual art, nature, and the cosmos are all intertwined, and the connection is illustrated in geometry. I think that is so beautiful. I wish more children learned about math using art and music; I think it would be a much more effective and holistic (and fun) way to learn. Everything has been so compartmentalized, and we have all become so isolated in our minds, careers, politics, and religions. We are all just points in the pattern. We are all necessary to each other because we are all connected. Everything is connected.

BO: Who or what influences your work?

My influences range from nature to the cosmos, Jazz and the Delta Blues, street art, the layers of graffiti.... I love Basquiat. But the first painters that I admired (and still look at) are Dekooning, Rothko, Richter, Diebenkorn, and Agnes Martin. One of my favorite books is called "The Tantric Paintings of Rajasthan." I have always loved Japanese prints and patterns and the tiles and mosaics found in Byzantine architecture. My heroine of the last few years is Hilma of Klint. I discovered her through searching Amazon for books on Sacred Geometry, and unrelatedly, on Diebenkorn. The Amazon algorithms presented me with Hilma. I had already been doing circles and squares for a while, and when I stumbled upon a book about her, I bought it. I was blown away as she painted and drew themes that I struggled to understand with such scale and beauty. When the Hilma Af Klint show came to the Guggenheim in NYC, I was very excited. Lately, I have been trying to tackle Plato.

BO: Thank you for your responses. Congratulations on your show.