Circles & The Number 8

a drawing from my new sketchbook**a tangle of 8s

So I might have a few obsessions, as you may be able to tell... I like to refer to them as more of "fascinations" rather than obsessions. Trees ** and the number 8. Why??? It began as purely an aesthetic thing. I didn't have a favorite number, so I thought to myself "I like 8...because it looks like an infinity turned on its side!"

∞8∞

An 8 can also be written as 2 circles, one on top of the other...and the circle is a powerful shape. Artists such as Kandinsky recognized the special qualities of the circle in their art...

The circle, he wrote, is “the most modest form, but asserts itself unconditionally.” It is “simultaneously stable and unstable,” “loud and soft,” “a single tension that carries countless tensions within it.”


"Several Circles" by Kandinsky, 1926

This past December, my painting professor (remember Filo?!) sent me this article all about the Meaning of Circles. . . At some point it talks about the circle in nature :

Life as we know it must be lived in the round, and the natural world abounds in circular objects at every scale we can scan. Let a heavenly body get big enough for gravity to weigh in, and you will have yourself a ball. Stars are giant, usually symmetrical balls of radiant gas, while the definition of both a planet like Jupiter and a plutoid like Pluto is a celestial object orbiting a star that is itself massive enough to be largely round.

It goes on to talk about the eye: a perfect sphere inscribed with perfectly circular irises pierced by circular pupils.

“The shape of any object represents the balance of two opposing forces. You get things that are round when those forces are isotropic, that is, felt equally in all directions.”

So, there is a b a l a n c e that exists within the circle and the sphere... a balance in every direction. This idea is so interesting to me !!



Just some things to think about . . . *

( read the whole article here )