The Golden Ratio

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The Golden Ratio PowerPoint Presentation

This is a link to a PowerPoint presentation about the Golden Ratio, Golden Rectangles and the Golden Spiral in math, nature, science and art. The mystery of phi and the associated mathematical sequence of the Fibonacci numbers are so powerful as to have led our ancient ancestors to call it Divine. It certainly seems to be the underlying order to the apparent chaos of nature. I gave this lecture to the North Tampa Arts League on September 24, 2014. Several years earlier I wrote an article about it for my art and photography students which you can read here http://classesbygainor.com/design.pdf. Since then I did a great deal of new research and found a wealth of information and really good websites on the subject, as well as obtaining the DVD lectures from The Great Courses The Joy of Thinking: The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas. Some of the new information is quite interesting, and different from my earlier article, where the Chambered Nautilus Shells is the famous emblem of the Golden Spiral and the Fibonacci numbers in nature, turns out not to be a Golden Spiral after all, but a kind of inverted one instead. 

Do not be alarmed by the math aspect of all this. I have a famous history of being totally mathematically challenged, from first grade when we were asked to look at our booklets in which there were cartoon illustrations of math problems. "There are three monkeys in a tree. One fell out, so how many are left?" My hand went up. "What happened to the monkey?" I asked my not amused teacher. And from that point on my association with mathematics went south! But I do have a kind of morbid fascination with all this, although I can't understand the equations that solve the riddle of Phi, but I can appreciate the wonder of it all without knowing a scrap of algebra! 

And, as an artist, I can certainly understand how the power of the Golden Rectangle has been used in art, industrial design, and architecture through the centuries. I certainly understand how the Golden Rectangle is featured in my own artwork!

Incidentally, if you do go to authorstream.com to look at the slides you need to advance them manually and it is a bit difficult to see how to do this if you are in full screen view. Put your mouse in the lower right corner and a little arrow appears. Click and you go to the next slide.

Map to HCC Gourmet Room for My Show

The Campus is located on Tampa Bay Blvd. which is just south of Raymond James Stadium on Dale Mabry Hwy. Turn west into Tampa Bay Blvd. and the campus will be on your right. Park in the General Parking Lot. The Gourmet Room is located in the Humanities Building, Room 118. See the circle on the map. If you can't find it, ask someone.

Awe Update

Remember? This was on July 14 When my dear friend's mop handle went through Awe

I picked up the painting this afternoon (my birthday!) and the restoration is amazing

Here is a detail of the tear on the front. I plan to paint a bud and leaf over it so it will be practically invisible. It is a beautiful repair

This is the back of the painting showing the tear. I don't really mind that it shows on the back. 

After this happened I decided to repaint the whole thing from scratch and ordered the stretchers and canvas for a redo. After seeing the photographs the restorer sent me I thought it would be a good idea to wait to see it finished. Now I just have some finishing to do on a few areas of the lower part of the painting and add something over the tear and price the painting for less than the original amount, and be done with it.

I am indebted to Anna Granina who lives in Land O Lakes, Florida, and is a fantastic art restorer who worked for many years for the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Additionally she is a very accomplished artist and I met her at one of the shows I curated at Carrollwood Cultural Center. 

Art Show

I will have a show of my Genesis Series paintings, and some other fruit and vegetable offerings, in this delightful dining room which is actually a laboratory for the students in the restaurant and hospitality department of the Hillsborough Community College. When I met with the staff the other day, the chefs were getting excited about what kind of food coordination they could create to go with my paintings for the opening reception.
The room is small and so they ask that reservations be made. The show will be on display until December 5th and lunches and dinners are served 3 days a week (check website for the schedule of international cuisine offerings), the price is fantastic and I will probably be going there for lunches and dinners though that time period. Want to meet me there?

The Perfect Picture

Oil on Linen     18 x 24     Private Collection (sold 9-6-14!)

You might ask "why so cheap?" This is quite a big discount for one of Gainor's paintings!

I did this painting on speculation after someone inquired about the previous painting of the same setting called "The Cranes of Carrollwood" which was both already sold and too expensive for their budget. I wanted to practice stretching canvas and used my new air compressor and pneumatic staple gun and the result is frightening mess and the corners are worse...each one folded differently and not professionally at all...thus the deep discount for messy stretching. But the painting is quite nice and has those same Sandhill Cranes and a lady from my Digital Photography class is snapping their picture. For those of you who don't know me the silver Scion is my car traveling along the street in both paintings! Now I want you to know that I have some skill at photo editing and I was not driving my car AND making this painting at the same time! Nor were the cranes and the lady in that exact location at the exact same time, although both of them were in the park at some time over the past 4 years when I go out there with my Digital Photography students to hunt down interesting photographs. Sometimes I'm grateful that I have a need to clutter up my hard drive with hundreds of photos of the same thing, over and over, and I have a wealth of images to get exactly the right lighting although the lady in the red shirt had to be moved and flipped so she would make the composition of the painting work.