Pery Burge

Sadly, Pery died on February 10th 2013, after a short battle with cancer. 

Her artistic vision was to explore the patterns of nature and the process of change and transformation. Pery enjoyed saying that "Nature is the best artist", but Nature was, in truth, not always such an easy collaborator — she had to work very hard to find and capture the colours and patterns that you can enjoy in her paintings and photographs shown here and on Flickr. 

One of the main motivations for her art was to show to others the beautiful patterns that she'd seen and recorded, and to explore the way the patterns evolve through time. One of her favourite T. S. Eliot quotes was: "For the pattern is new in every moment." 

Pery would want people to continue to find pleasure in the unsurpassed beauty and variety of nature around them, and to continue looking for and enjoying the changing patterns of nature. For her, the viewer’s imaginative response and contribution was an important part of the creative process.

None of us can hope for more than a comparatively brief stay on this amazing planet of ours. I'm grateful that, for a good proportion of my own stay, I was able to share Pery's life and art with her. I'm hoping that her artistic work will continue to give pleasure to more people in the future.

—Pete, February 20th, 2013

Looking forward to 2013 ....

.... with fresh images from my collection and with new ideas in the pipeline.  Meanwhile, here's one of my favourites from 2012 .. it's called 'Cool Pebble'

'Cool Pebble'

.... also looking forward to next year with my new A4 calendar of images photographed in my studio at home this year, cropped samples of pages below. Each page contains an image approximately A5 landscape in size, as 'Cool Pebble' appears above, for instance.  I am selling this unique collection of images for £25 inc. p&p; if you're interested just contact me.

 
Calendar selection

Jellyfish and old lace

Wandering through my collections today, I found a few recent inksplosion images I wanted to share. Hope you enjoy them!

'Pink symmetry'

'Psychojelloid'

'Liquid zoom'

'Supersplosion'

'Resting place'

new viewpoints

'nova nova' 

'soft rocks'

'dark matter'

Light experiments

It's always magical to watch light turning somersaults and doing the splits on and within glass ... here are a few tricks it played today.  

'Time travel'

'Bird landing'

'Cloudforms'

An age of surfaces

That's what we live in.

'Star beams'

Klein bottle detail, Science Museum, London

'Supersolids' at the Science Museum, London

'Bubbleshadows'

Let's get experimental

Here are a few recent experiments which I enjoyed ... hope you do too.

 'on the rocks'

'Space race'

'wrinkled spacetime'

'infinity loop'

'aerial geometry'

Transient forms

A few fleeting impressions from today.

'Impressions of flight'

'a puff of smoke'

'Coelacanth passing by' 

'Rockfall spray'

Inksplosions - a few favourites

At this time of year I like to review my work, and post some of my favourite images up for you to enjoy.  Here are a few .... more soon. 

'Nebulous network'

'Cosmic Ray'

 'Echo rococo'

'Cosmic jellyform'

Time passes; light passes through..

'Watching time pass by'

I've just added a new gallery - 'Time passing, light passing through' consisting of recent images featuring timelapse and reflection. New shapes appear when time is added; golden balls turn into doughnut shapes or lamp-like objects.  Topological changes occur too with reflected objects; exciting distortions are the order of the day.

Below, some images from earlier today featuring new angles of incidence and reflection ... enjoy!

'Cosmic angles of attack 1'

'Cosmic angles of attack 2'

'Glass armour galleon'

'Spark off in the cosmos'

Loci ... getting on track

The addition of time.  Soon I'll post a new gallery of images, many of which incorporate the fourth dimension .. meanwhile here are two taken recently.

'Swinging high'

'Bulb form'

Let's get cosmological; biological too ...

A few more from outer space and nearer home.

'Mushroom in the Ether'

'Mission in progress'

'The growth of physics'

'Thrills and bubble spills'

Imagination .... the magic ingredient

'The imagination dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate ... '  S.T. Coleridge's words  (bold italics) quoted by Charles Jencks in his book 'The Architecture of the Jumping Universe"  

A process of transformation occurs when the viewer looks at an image, adds his imagination and thereby to some extent makes the image his own.

Your interpretation/version of the images below will be different from mine ... many versions coexisting ... 

'Spiral evolution'

'Carmen M'

'Effortless symmetry'

Flowdance glowdance!

'Flowdance glowdance' is a journey through some of my favourite images of the year. As always, different media, same concerns: these images are chosen for their ambiguity of scale and content, bright colour, unusual shapes and universal patterning .... set to some cool sounds made here at home by iPB Soundscapes ... enjoy!

Stretching a long way's OK

Here are some inksplosions I have taken recently that show ink being stretched; in some cases, quite a long way. Many inks seem quite comfortable with that; they are very elastic.  As we see from these four images, different inks behave in different ways when undergoing the same outward movement.

'Oval window, Bubble eye'

'Extremo-chromaphile'

'Aqua vortex, yellow window' 

'Windows within windows'

Transitional textures

Here are three images I took a couple of days ago, all showing dynamic texturing, caught in the act of change.

The first and second images feature lacy networking and swirls respectively.  The third image is the aftermath of several bubbles exploding - we can track the patterns of the pops.

Cosmic lace

'Janus'

'Bubble fallout'

Art/science workshop details

Below are details and a link about a free art/science workshop event at Exeter Museum next month.  It should be a very interesting and varied afternoon - I'm looking forward to taking part!  Below is a detail of my image 'Significant Edges' used for the poster, showing repetitive, rhythmic vortices contrasting with the jagged 'toothed' edge above.  Here is the original 'Heart of Devon' page 

'Heart of Devon' publicity for 'Collider - exploring hybridity''Significant edges' detail

Mood lighting

Hard lighting, soft lighting, and a little of both ... these four images were taken today within a few minutes of each other as the sun was setting. 

'Sharp to the top of the glass'

'Breaking light'

'Soft ranges'

'Firebird in flight'

Bubble dynamics

Bubbles have been very much on my mind lately - see the entries from recently on 'Hubble Bubble' - a sculpture created with members of Exeter University and on show at the moment.

Here are some bubblespreads made at home in the last couple of days.  So much is going on within and below these miniatures spaces. 

'All-seeing being'

'Heading for gold' 

'planet bubble'

'Flyaway with inner vortices'

'Bubblemania'

Inksplosions - after and before

Here are two radial spreads each at two stages which I took earlier today. In each case I show the later one first. At some point I will post the complete sequences of each in a new gallery - meanwhile, hope you enjoy these.

'embryonic form'

'embryonic form - beginnings'

'Suggestions of form with golden arrow'

'Suggestions of form'