Margot's Musings No. 07 - Geometry of Growing

Geometry of Growing

Nature rarely grows in straight lines.

A vine curls toward the light. Leaves repeat themselves along a stem. Seeds gather into circles and spirals. Petals radiate from a center, pinecone scales overlap one upon another, and branches divide only to divide again.

Look closely enough and the natural world begins to feel surprisingly mathematical.

In Margot's Musings No. 07 — Geometry of Growing, Margot Reagan takes those familiar forms and lets them wander into something new.

When Nature Becomes Pattern

At first glance, Geometry of Growing is quite different from Margot's earlier Art Morsels. Rather than a gathering of individual mushrooms, flowers, insects, and woodland discoveries, this piece is a single composition.

Circles overlap. Lines pass through one another. Botanical drawings appear within unexpected shapes. Leaves curl around curves, flowers gather inside dark spaces, and a pinecone becomes part of a much larger pattern.

Some elements are immediately recognizable. Others ask you to look a little longer.

And perhaps that is the most characteristic thing about Margot's work.

She notices.

Not necessarily the grand landscape or the perfect flower, but the peculiar shape, the repeating line, the seedpod with an interesting structure, or the little detail most of us would walk right past.

The Order Hidden in Growing Things

There is something fascinating about the contrast in this piece.

The circles and geometric forms suggest order and structure. The botanical drawings inside them are loose, intricate, and organic.

Yet the two belong together.

Nature is filled with geometry, although we don't always recognize it as such. Spirals, branching patterns, repetition, symmetry, and circles appear everywhere from flowers and shells to leaves and seed heads.

Margot hasn't tried to make a scientific study of those patterns. Instead, she has played with the idea.

What happens when a leaf becomes part of a circle?

When a pinecone occupies its own little world?

When delicate botanical lines meet bold areas of black?

The result sits somewhere between botanical drawing, pattern, and imagination.

A Different Kind of Margot's Musing

One of the pleasures of developing Margot's Musings for The Vestige Post is discovering that the collection doesn't need to follow a formula.

Margot works in many ways and with many materials. Her curiosity determines where a piece goes next.

Geometry of Growing reflects that freedom.

It isn't quite a botanical illustration. It isn't traditional geometric art. And it isn't one of Margot's cut-apart sheets of Art Morsels.

It is simply another way of looking.

Perhaps that is what connects all of Margot's work: the possibility that something ordinary becomes much more interesting when we stop long enough to really see it.

And sometimes, when we look closely enough, we discover that even the wildest things have a little geometry tucked inside.

Margot's Musings No. 07 — Geometry of Growing is available in the Shop at The Vestige Post.

A Trace Worth Keeping.