Homage to Escher

I have written a bit about ("lifelike") Tessellations already, but I just can't leave the subject alone. I adore them, they hold a special fascination for me as little else ever has had. In this respect, as in others, I feel I am flowing willy-nilly along mental streams first explored by The Master, M C Escher.

It was Dutchman Escher (1898-1972), who discovered that creature-like forms could be drawn in such a way that the outline of one creature on one side would also form part of an outline of an identical, or similar, or completely different creature-like form on the other side. Nowhere in any previous civilization is there any record of anyone having created such a design. Escher himself found that fact astounding, and so do I. He said of his new insights into the regular division of the plane, "I am head over heels in love with it, and I still don't know why."

I first saw "Sky and Water", one of Escher's best-known designs in 1969, when he was still alive, and I thought it the most remarkable artwork I had ever seen. I have never changed my mind about that. On the contrary, Escher's work continued to grow on me, and fired me with the ambition to create some tessellations of my own.

I have just got hold of a copy of a book I last saw many years ago, "ESCHER: The Complete Graphic Work" (J.L. Locher Ed., Thames and Hudson, 1992, reprinted 1995). Strangely, it is not true to title, since at least 2 tessellations I know of are absent: one of greyhound-like Dogs, and one of Sea-Horses which is one of my very favourites. Whether there are others missing I do not know, but in any case what is there is astounding. Escher's draftsmanship, his "ordinary" drawings, his impossible perspective drawings, all of these are amazing - in fact they put the "MAZE" into amazing! - but I could never come within cooee of his skills and insights with regard to these aspects of his work, nor would I try. For all their quirky brilliance, none of them gets to me the way his lifelike tessellations do. That is where my interest begins and continues. It is only in this area - and not even all of that - that I have dared to attempt to create designs that I hope Escher would himself salute.

I wrote this ambition in verse, years ago:

Once I saw sketch of Escher's - Sky and Water is its name -
It's Ducks and Fishes actually, but precious just the same -
Those beasties blew my brainbox! - I was never so impressed ! -
So then I tried to tessellate - Put Escher under pressure, Mate!
- Well, excel them, at any rate:
To better Escher's best!

Why in verse? you cry. Well, because:

I've often thought, verse uses words
As Escher uses fish and birds:
Every image, still, yet living,
Bound by meter unforgiving,
And every rhyme must suit each sound
Of every meaning it wraps around,
And every line must hold its place
Like Escher's creatures, locked in space . . .

I write a great deal of rhyming verse, perhaps partly as self-consolation for not having Escher's facility with drawing. In particular I try to write pithy verses about my tessellating designs.