Artist Gregor Harvie

We have relied solely on the language of numbers to describe our world for too long.  Maths has not given us a collective understanding of the nature of our world, it has not revealed a picture we understand.

We need the maths, but we also need a leap of imagination.

My work is based on art as a tool for understanding. I start by grouping ideas; forming word equations to quickly order thoughts, unconstrained by the dogma of maths or grammar. They combine into logic poems; statements of principle that have a rhythm in their own right, and help focus decisions in the paintings they accompany.

The paintings explore how these ideas occupy space and time. They are not diagrams, not literal transferences of the ideas; those are just the starting points. The process of expression is about finding the balance, the contrast and form that gives the pieces life, that makes them real.

I work aggressively using brushes, bottles and nibs, plasterer’s tools, sprays, sanders, heaters and resins. I work and re-work and obliterate and re-work. I work on hard panels that can be attacked, laid flat, picked up, turned round and separated to paint from the inside out. They let me inhabit the subject, enter the surface, paint at a large scale while retaining the control of the reach of the arm.

The paintings that emerge frustrate interpretation by their lack of continuity. The units are not standardised, the forms do not repeat, the compositions do not follow patterns. They are blueprints robbed of meaning; a cloud of possible states that the observer must piece together. 

Rather than revealing the relationship between things - the ‘relativity’ of physics - they show the opposite – the ‘independence’ of one thing from another, from space, from time, each irreducible point the centre of its own world. An uncomfortable realisation that each part is unique, each part is alone.

We are deceived by the solidity of our surroundings to believe in a fundamental interdependence. But in truth our home is a place of rare density in a universe of very little. It is only weak filaments that connect the isolated dots, that define and fill the space, forming an invisible continuity that makes the fragments whole. 

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Painting #1645 - 122cm x 122cm acrylic on 2 panels

| (here / now) |

| infinite | singular ≈ (solitary / alone) |

| (unrelated / independent  / unconnected) ≈ free |

| freefalling ≠ (static) | converging ≈ close |

| path = unmoved-1 |

Physics art - painting by artist Gregor Harvie
 || contains a related group
() contains a word or phrase that does not properly express the concept
/ or
≈ approximates / similar to
= equals
∴ and so / therefore
≠ does not equal
> greater or better than
strikethrough unhelpful
-n inverse
underline emphasis / truth




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