“It’s not obvious where this is going. Maybe it will be something spectacular. Maybe it will just be a curiosity. We don’t know. But it’s something and it’s a beautiful something.”
Nima Arkani-Hamed
Artist Statement:
David’s art is an encrypted biogeometric triangle mesh based on the amplituhedron model, designed to communicate with humans using Plato’s Form Theory.
Leonardo wrote:
“The art of painting is to take a flat surface and by embracing the forms with chiaroscuro make it rise to another plane without increasing its volume. A great painting meets the viewer as an entire statement. Its two-dimensional reality encourages a design system that controls the visual surface. This is the geometry of art. All the elements are connected to the external edges of the work by sympathetic lines or colors.”
Thank you for taking the time to look at my work and stopping by to learn a little more about me. Bellow I have two video’s that explain the “Why” and “How” of the art. Scrolling down past there is more of my story. If you get that far I have surprise and a link to some sketches starting in 1974.
1993-Present
I made a career life change. I started a two-year program to train to become an EEG Tech. The mind has always fascinated me from a sports/competitive tool. This seemed like a shortcut for me. I had an early block about education. I never wanted to be told “what to learn”, as I wanted to be taught “how to learn.” During school, I was introduced to a video called “The Mind’s Eye.” This was a pivotal point for me. Learning the physiological process of how we see just blew my mind. It made me think about my early art adventures and creativity.
I jumped into photography in the late 90’s, working with kids. The kids’ parents would tell me how their children would change just by looking at their images. I made large prints – 24x36 – mostly of kids engaging in sports. I went on a research path and discovered a whole new world. At this time, I was only aware of the visual process and was unaware of the subconscious. I started using photography to change lives. I started a non-profit called “The I Am Me Project.” I worked with Easter Seals, battered women’s shelters, and the like. I am so grateful for the photography experience, but it just never filled my creative bucket. I always found myself wanting to be more organic and desired to stop looking at a computer screen as my canvas.
I was living in a downtown loft in Denver. The West was one of my childhood romances, second to scuba diving. When I was a kid my mom would come home from work and find me either riding like on a horse or on the floor swimming with a dive mask . In my loft, I wanted a contemporary piece of art. I was digging some of William Matthews’ work but was short of $30,000. I just decided to paint on my own. At that moment, “David Alderman Arts” was created!
I wanted to create art that would change how the viewer would feel. Ha! Not a new concept, right?! I just kept falling back thinking about that movie, “The Mind’s Eye.” I was producing art and now selling it to collectors and commercial projects. I remember just feeling a gap in my concepts and visions.
During the Covid lockdown, I started researching how by simply observing art, one’s physiology can change. I think we all have this mystical knowledge of how that works. What I found was the science! There are graduate programs; one of my favorites is at the University of Arizona. This was a giant step in my life path. Additionally, learning that the Norwegians are prescribing art as a healing tool for post-surgical patients was mind-blowing for me.
The Change:
It was around June 2021 when I was asked to paint a full-sized Unicorn for a non-profit in Denver, called “The Uncommon Project.” I was given total creative freedom on the project. I was observing the blank fiberglass mold and kept seeing geometric shapes, and that is exactly what I did for the next four weeks. At the fundraiser gala, people were telling me that the Unicorn was speaking to them. Curious as I am, I began exploring geometric shapes and mostly studied Cubist Artist, Picasso. This caused me to dive into trying a 2D version of what I saw in 3D with the Unicorn.
I found some crystal polygons demonstrated by a group in the San Francisco area called QGR (Quantum Gravity Research). I started using polygons to overlay images and used them as guides to cut a 2D image into geometric forms. Now I had this quantum-based geometric art. I produced two pieces with the same reaction – that the art was like a language. This only has driven me to understand more and to refine my technique! While spending hours and hours learning and even cutting-edge theory on the end of “space and time” quantum from the brilliant mind of Nima Arkani-Hamed, at the Princeton lab. I used his “amplituhedron” to convert the perception of reality into a geometric form to communicate and simplify the almost impossible. Given all this new knowledge made me think about the fact that I needed a better foundation. Hmmm…a little reverse engineering, perhaps? I want to use triangles. Triangles are the simplest polygon – a common approach to a complex problem, such as analyzing a complex surface. Out of all the two-dimensional shapes, only the triangle is rigid. The triangle: the simple shapes that make our mathematical, physical worlds go around.
Of course, by using the triangle, one would think to dive into the evolution of the Pythagoras Theorem. While this took several months to grasp, I felt like Plato’s Theory of Forms is what resonates best with me. As I advance my skill, I can probably say that Plato’s, “The Form of the Good” is what I want to rest my legacy on.
Socrates, a student of Plato said: “This is how I see – “ (in the Republic VII 517 B.C.)
In the knowable realm, the form of the good is the last thing to be seen, and it is reached only with difficulty. Once one has seen it, however, one must conclude that it is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful in anything, that it produces both light and its source is the visible realm, and that in the intelligible realm it controls and provides truth and understanding so that anyone who is to act sensibly in private or public must see it.