Dorothea Rockburne has been called a distinguished abstract painter whose work is cerebral, rational and schematic, yet deeply sensual — while creating an illusion of suspended radiance.

Rockburne claims inspiration from two significant sources. While attending Black Mountain College in North Carolina, at age 18, she found painting classes to be less interesting than courses about mathematical systems: topology (which she describes as “a way of thinking about the space in our universe as one continuous surface with gravitational indentations that we call stars and planets”), set theory, geometry, harmonic intervals, the Golden Section and Fibonacci numbers. Rockburne found further inspiration baking with her daughter. “Christine and I made this chocolate cake one day. It was a rectangular cake, and I had bought sugared candy violets and we put them all over it. She was five and wonderful, so every moment I had with her was really precious. Then she cut a pie-shaped piece from the rectangular cake because that was all she’d ever seen. I looked at it and I was astounded.”

She says of her work, “The final painting is meant to be experienced visually. I take it for granted that my depth of soul and visual discernment will be contained in everything I do… there is a kind of magic to geometry and higher mathematics… My ambition in painting is to perceive and construct a spatial geometry for the 21st century.” She also insists art is “absolutely political in that it’s a force for the right — for happiness, for humanistic values. It’s not a commodity.”

Sensuous. Intellectual. Political. But also religious, trying for the “experience I have had in Catholic Church. The way in which the atmosphere is thick from the stained glass windows creates a tremendous sense of space. … I think that paintings are like angels; they go out and plant their messages.”

Take a look at Dorothea Rockburne’s mathematical angels.

Summer Solstice, 1991
Watercolor and watercolor stick on paper

Zero to One
Two panels, Lascaux Aquacryl and Caran D’Ache on gessoed masonite

Euclid’s Comet, 1996-7
Lascaux aquacryl on speciallly prepared surface.

Neutron Star, 1998Lascaux aquacryl on handmade paper

Gravitational Pull #7, 2002Lascaux Aquacryl and copper on hand-made Dieu Donne paper

The Twins: Castor and Pollux, 2002Two panels, Lascaux Aquacryl, copper on gesso-prepared linen

Star Structure, 2002
Copper, Caran D’Ache, digital image, Lenox 100pd, mounted on Moulin de Lorroque

Copper, Paper Pulp, and Dieu Donne #2, 2003
Copper foil, paper pulp, Lascaux aquacryl, glue mounted on ragboard

Rising Star, 2003
Caran d’Ache, copper, photo montage on Moulin de Lorroque paper

Elliptical #5, 2004Oil on copper, coated and sanded

Geometry of Stardust: A Musical Fifth, 2009-10
Lascaux Perlacryl and Aquacryl paint, Golden High Load Titanium White acrylic,
and gold leaf on Strathmore 140 lb cold press watercolor paper

Geometry of Stardust: Secret Relationships, 2009-10
Lascaux Perlacryl and Aquacryl paint,
Golden High Load Titanium White acrylic, and
gold leaf on Strathmore 140 lb cold press watercolor paper