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Redundancy in one's mid-forties would traditionally be regarded as a terrible twist of fate. Yet once I accepted the idea, personal circumstances gave it all a much more favourable twist. With a decent payoff for over 20 years service, minimal financial burdens and an established tendency towards a less material way of life, I have sufficient means to live but simply for a few years. And so I remain relatively free to pursue my particular vision quest with its odd blend of technical know-how, creative development and spiritual insight.
Spin it negatively and say that I'm stuck in front of a computer screen all day. Or realise that I eschew smock and turpentine in favour of the clack-clack of the keys, the subtle gesture of the mouse and the reassurance of Ctrl-Z.
Stumbling upon the world of fractals was a pivotal moment in my life. I appreciate that for many, this may seem odd if not downright unhealthy. And yet it may be seen as a natural continuity of a long spiritual tradition: Jung's 'discovery' of the mandala is a comparable event. Fractals are very much modern mandalas: if we look at the origin of the word, we find "having, or containing, essence" and "completion". Jung used them as visual aids to regain internal wholeness, essentially as a therapeutic aid. The cross-scale self-similarity of the fractal is a visual representation of the principle of holography, that a part contains a representation, an essence, of the whole.
Some artists make a point of not titling their work, generally with the idea that labelling prejudices. I applaud this approach but I intend to present my own vision: make of it what you will.
