Wet streaming pigment on the edge of chaos dissipates as it flows outward. With its last energies, it sends out delicate, branches, tiny stretches of itself, on and into the paper. The shapes are like ideas deepening physical brain matter or water creating tiny rivulets on the edge of a river. Given enough time such simple branching fractals create grand complexities. What spontaneously emerges can be as rich as Einstein's mind and Arizona's Grand Canyon.

When our world encourages us to specialize and fragment, to live and think in limited categories we lose our ability to see the rich, complex whole which is present and within which we ourselves are whole.

I invite you to look at our world through these paintings with the perspective that comes from the edge of chaos.

We live on the edge of chaos, and it's a beautiful, miraculous place to be. Farther away from chaos we are static. Over the edge of chaos we are lost in bewildering turbulence. But close to the edge, where energy is high, where movement, interaction, transformation, coupling and emergence continually flow and tumble in unpredictable yet orderly living -- that's the joyous place of life. That's where simple meets simple and builds toward purposeful complexity. It's where we are spontaneous, adaptive and alive. It's the scene of spontaneous emergence and where fractals flow.

The edge of chaos is home.

Index

Gallery

Question on Edge of Chaos

Chaos Links

Joanna Poppink is an artist living and working in West Los Angeles, CA U.S.A. Send your comments or questions to her at staff@selfhelpmagazine.com