Painting a Fractle

(Thanks wikipedia for the pic of a fractle)

A friend of mine is painting a fractal.

Fractals are beautiful, but I can imagine someone arguing that it is impossible to paint a fractal. My mind immediately went off to defending the unfinished and unseen painting before any arguments against it had been made. Some part of me enjoys this kind of mental game.

I feel that artists are allowed a certain liberty when dealing with mathematical and scientific subjects. Artists can be translators from math to visual representation. The perfect beauty expressed in mathematics doesn't exactly transcend into beauty of the form or surface in the way a Rembrandt does. An artist must sometimes stretch what is mathimaticly and scientifically corrent to convey reality.

For example, a transliteration of the Odyssey will be clumsy and difficult to understand while a translation can express the beauty of the original writing in a new language.

Likewise an artist needs to be allowed the same kind of flexibility their works that are designed to represent or are inspired by math and science. This will let an artist take liberties that can recreate the visual beauty in their artwork.