Metamorphosis III excerpt 6 1968

This is a section of a woodcut made by M.C. Escher; he was trying to figure out infinity with geometry. What does it mean to fill a plane? Looking at those triangles morphing into birds, I sympathize with Escher, searching, like so many artists do, for ways to bridge perception and reality with representation. He’s using a simple palette to create a complex transformation, and the way those shapes lock together to create the illusion of movement is so satisfying. Escher probably thought a lot about how the eye travels across a surface, what our brains do with pattern, how visual tricks can be both intellectual and playful. He must have loved the process of discovery, figuring out how to make one thing turn into another right before our eyes. Painters, sculptors, filmmakers, even writers and musicians… we all build on each other’s curiosity, answering and questioning and trying to make sense of what we see and how we feel. We are each other’s audience.