I will not bore you with the timeless question of "What is art?" But instead I shall say that for me, I never truly wanted my art to be anything more or less then beautiful. I am drawn very strongly to that which I find to be beautiful, I seek to surround myself with it. I find myself frustrated when I am unable to produce this quality in my work. The art program I am in has always been much more concerned with the communication of an idea, or the solving of a problem visually rather then the simple pursuit of beauty.

This evening I discovered something that is so pure in its beauty that it seems almost unfair. It is hard to describe exactly why I am so fixated with it - perhaps because it is so very universal.

I speak, of course, of fractals.

I had known about them for the longest time, but I was not prepared for what awaited me. If you ever want to treat yourself, visit one of the countless galleries of talented fractal artists. (I recommend the gallery of Janet Parke for starts.) There is also a free programme called Apophysis that generates a particular type of fractal. I've spent what feels like a couple of hours just creating random batchs of images and looking at them one by one.

I really can't describe how seeing these images makes me feel. They are so very beautiful and rich - many of them feel like they should be oil paintings. I feel a desperate desire to be able to create them myself, and then frustration when I know it will take a long time for me to get gain enough mastery of any fractal programme to do that. A long time and many tutorials. Until I can make images like those of Janet Parke, I will have to content myself with making fractals like this: