ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ (know thyself) at Happy Time Studio in Issaquah, WA
Sep 5 - Oct 19 2025
“A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns…I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.”
— G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology
“Expressing oneself in the world and creativity are the same. It may not be possible to know who you are without somehow expressing it.”
— Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Juliet Fiss explores the theme of self-reflection through the meditative process of hand-painting mathematical patterns. Fiss’s prime numbers paintings are mathematical visualizations of the prime factorization of the integers. Each square cell contains a single number, starting at one. For each of the two large paintings in Gnothi Seauton (Huge Notations), the numbers count up to 2700. The two paintings are mirrored; the first line in the light painting reads from left to right, while the first line in the dark painting reads from right to left. The numbers loop around, with alternate lines reading from left to right and then from right to left.
Filled-in squares represent prime numbers, each with a unique symbol, color, or texture. All squares greater than one contain compositions of symbols representing prime factors that multiply together to yield a composite number. For example, if a dot represents two and a dash represents three, then the sixth square contains a dot and a dash, representing “six equals two times three.” Each number can be appreciated close up as a unique composition. Viewed from a distance, natural patterns and symmetries become visually apparent in the prime and composite numbers.
The prime numbers, painted sequentially, are a mantra for Fiss’s meditative painting process. With the logical mind focused on precisely painting one mathematical symbol at a time, the creative mind is unlocked for intuitive experimentation, self-reflection, and discovery.
