Works on Paper:

The works on paper first started in 2004 and have been in a process of refinement and experimentation to this day.

Despite the art being a contemporary product of the digital age, the artworks have a warm tactile presence. The paper prints use a combination of conservation grade pigment inks, archival bamboo or mulberry washi paper and some have hand-applied gold leaf.

The washi paper is made in Japan and allows the ink to spread and soak into the fibres, so the print is not just a one-way physical record of a digital image. Instead the digital file is only party of the pre-print preparatory process for a specific material output, just as preparing a plate or stone in traditional printmaking methods. Proofs are made, and the results fed back into the adjustments and preparations for the final print.

Strange Creatures

The Strange Creatures series launched in October 2016 on Richard’s 50th birthday at an exhibition at Arndt Fine Art in Gillman Barracks in Singapore. The exhibition was a paired one with an Escher show, and the works were presented as an extension of Escher’s unique tessellations into new mathematics discovered after his death. A book Strange Creatures: Complex Tessellations was launched at the close of the exhibition. If you are interested in the book, there is some more information here. In 2018 a set of 5 prints in a custom folio was produced with Gallery Sun, launched at Art Taipei. The Strange Creatures series continues to grow, with a Strange Creatures II exhibition planned for 2021.

emergent nets

This collection was launched in Taipei in October 2018 two years after the Strange Collection series. It explored the world of space-filling curves, where a single line wanders around the Infinite plane in a fractal structure, eventually visiting every point in the space. These mathematical structures were explored in the Net series, where this line was expressed as a woven net. In each case the beginning and end of the twine is left exposed at the bottom right of the net, and the path can be traced through the complex structure. The Screen series expressed these structures in the form of an architectural screen, while a third series of interlocking rings are the Musica Aperiodica series.

archimedes’ aquatics

This collection was developed between 2018 and 2020, and will be exhibited in 2021. It features a set of tessellated creatures based on Archimedean tilings that can make an infinite series of tessellation patterns. The exhibition will feature a set of scrolls Order and Complexity, which combine regular symmetrical patterns with complex aperiodic patterns. It also includes very large 3m tessellations in the Recombinant series, which combine symmetric patterns that transition one to the next. A set of 24 of the patterns forms a large wall art piece, and is available as a box set. All the artworks come in two colour variants, the “Jewel” set and the “Earth” set.