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.