Cosmic Flares, 1965-66

48” x 47” x 6”

Polymer lenses on Perspex in painted wood frame, lights and motorised switching mechanism.

I began to fabricate framed wall sculptures using thin acrylic sheets as surfaces and incorporating within the frame numerous small spotlights that were programmed to turn on and off sequentially to change the angle of incident light illuminating the surface.

I would like to make cosmic maps. It should be that in the discipline of a drawing there is the same rhythm as that of cosmic forces.

A lens is a point, which could be a photon, an electron, an atom. I wanted to get to the bottom of what a point really was. It appeared to me that as a point might be considered circular, I could make a circle of points which could expand into concentric circles. But, the space in between the succeeding points became greater and greater so that point lines radiated from the central circle. Because of this I realised that each point is connected to its nearest neighbours by some kind of force. A point is in reality a particle of matter and contains the same positive and negative forces as all other matter.