Going up the stairs and going down the stairs...

If you're an avid watcher of Family Guy, you'll understand the reference when I say that the next line of the title is "going up the sideways stairs." Even if every person in the world got my lame joke, there's only a handful of people who can make sense of my next artist. Let's take a look through the eyes of Mr. M.C. Escher.

M.C. Escher is one of the world’s most renowned graphic designers and his work can be found in many museums and, luckily for me, many websites. Over his lifetime, Escher created over 448 lithographs (printings on plane surfaces that the area on which to be printed is ink receptive and the area around it is ink repellent), woodcuts and engravings, and over 2,000 sketches. Escher spent most of his childhood life in The Netherlands. He failed the second grade because of illness however; Escher showed promise in the art world at a very early age.

 In 1958, Escher published a book entitled Regular Division of a Plane. He became increasingly aware of Roman architecture and began to base his designs around the mathematical concepts used within the structures. Regular Division of a Plane contains many of Escher’s works of woodcut blocks and sketches in which he described as the systematic buildup of mathematical designs in his artwork.

Following his claim to fame, Escher also constructed many blueprints for “impossible” structures of architecture. One of his most famous works, Relativity, is a drawing of multiple stairs all leading in different directions, yet still attached to the same foundation. It is in these drawings that Escher most captures the use of mathematical concept in art. His tessellations are also widely renowned as some of the most complex ideas. Escher was one of the first to experiment with tessellations and created many over his lifetime.

  
(Relativety, 1953)



(Night and Day, woodcut in 1938)