Artist’s Statement
My painting style was once described as “whimsical realism” by a fellow watercolorist. This tendency toward realism, combined with my belief that visual poetry should contain words or language elements, results in the type of visual poetry seen here. Photographs taken on my backpacking trips, sometimes manipulated in Photoshop, provide the backdrop for some visual and mathematical poems. Regarding mathematical poetry, the reader is meant to actually perform the math function (addition, subtraction, division, integration or taking the derivative of an equation) on the words or phrases in a poem. In calculus-based poems, sometimes a word represents a constant, rather than a variable, lending a deeper meaning to the interpretation. I prefer to write accessible poetry. Even the calculus poems are approachable, if one thinks of a derivative as the rate of change and an integral as the area under the curve. For further discussion of mathematical poetry, visit the blog of Kaz Maslanka.
