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For years the artist, Ray Balbes, pursued his two
interests, art and mathematics as two totally different entities.
In the realm of art, he created Plexiglas furniture and sculptures and
painted in acrylics. With the advent of the personal computer he started to create
art on the computer. His first
computer art was an animated stick figure ballet that he created for his
daughter’s birthday present. He
created other animated sequences and added features for others to create
animations. “The Animator” was
his first commercial software and eventually led to a professional software
package for artists. While writing
the software, the artist created many interesting animated sequences. The artist experimented with techniques to blend colors,
to distort objects, and to create shadows.
He was familiar with chaos theory and fractals and wondered if other
mathematical techniques would produce the shapes and intense colors that
interested him. His initial work
could be seen on a monitor, but could not be printed due to the poor quality of
color printers at that time.. With
improved quality and lower prices for color printers, the artist started
printing his images. Traditional artists experiment with different
techniques. Computer artists are no
different. Ray experimented with
three-dimensional techniques. His
“Riemann Sun” was the first three dimensional image: he mapped a fractal
onto a sphere. He next wanted to
create a three dimensional landscape. He
had a fractal created from the gamma function and experimented with placing the
image on a grid, then elevating the pieces of the grid based on the color of the
image. This is the very popular
“Gamma Island”. The artist next
wanted to experiment with creating pictures that had many components and used
several techniques. He also is an
avid gardener. So he experimented
with creating flowers. The three
pictures, “Night Blooms”, “Floral”, and “Sunflowers” followed, each
adding another new process. The artist is fascinated with water lilies, orchids,
cactus, and unusual plants. Recently
the artist traveled to Alaska and British Columbia.
Near Skagway Alaska he saw a beautiful reflecting lake.
Then at the Bouchard Gardens in Victoria British Columbia he saw a pond
filled with water lilies. The
artist wanted to create an image that combined the two themes.
“Lilies of the Lake” is a reflecting lake at sunrise with many
beautiful water lilies. The artist
also saw the water lilies and lily pads at the Missouri Botanical gardens in St.
Louis and incorporated a large lily pad into his picture.
As with many of his pictures, there is a little whimsy. On the large lily pad is an eggshell. The artist created his vision, “Lilies of the Lake”, by
layering images that were created with many different mathematical techniques. Another interesting landscape is “Obelisk”. It is an other world image that was inspired by the search for life on other planets. The picture was created before the two vehicles landed on Mars.. The artist is now experimenting with creating images that use a special lens to create three-dimensional pictures and pictures that change when viewed from different angles.
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