Geometry of Emotion
I don’t organize feelings; I allow their structure to reveal itself through proportion and pause.
We often think of emotion as erratic—something formless, overwhelming, and unpredictable. But in the studio, I’ve learned the opposite. Feeling has structure. It moves with intention. It carries weight, rhythm, and proportion. Emotion, like a building, can be entered. It has shape.
In my paintings, that shape reveals itself through geometry—through the careful alignment of line, the distribution of space, the negotiation between density and quiet. The emotional charge of a work doesn’t come from gesture alone; it comes from the relationship between elements. A small mark placed against a large field can evoke solitude. A cluster of lines near the edge can create tension or longing. The slightest shift of proportion can tilt the entire emotional gravity of the painting.
The geometry of emotion is not mathematical; it is perceptual. It requires a kind of listening. When I step back from a canvas, I’m not asking, “Does this look right?” but “Does this feel balanced?” Balance is not symmetry—it is coherence. A painting breathes when its internal relationships align with human sensitivity, when the motion of color and line reflects the movement of thought and feeling.
My background in mathematics does not dictate the structure, but it informs my intuition. Proportion carries resonance. Intervals between gestures behave like pauses in music. Rhythm emerges through repetition and variation. Silence—those untouched spaces—is not emptiness; it is emotional rest. It’s where the viewer enters, where breath returns to the body.
This is why composition matters so deeply. It becomes the architecture through which emotion becomes visible without needing narrative. In representational art, emotion often arrives through story—expression, symbolism, posture. In abstraction, emotion is conveyed through proportion, contrast, tension, release. It’s a more vulnerable language, because it cannot rely on depiction. It relies entirely on presence.
When a painting is working, I feel it before I understand it. The geometry settles. A calm clarity emerges—not the clarity of conclusion, but the clarity of coherence. Emotion has found its home. Nothing is added or removed. The painting simply is—complete, breathing.
In a world that often demands explanation, abstraction offers another path: the direct experience of feeling without the noise of interpretation. It reminds us that emotion is not disorder—it is design. And if we pay attention, we can sense the architecture beneath our own inner lives.
My upcoming book, The Shape of Seeing: The Genesis of Abstraction, explores this architecture of emotion in depth — coming soon.
