Portrait of my wife, Tanya
No. 192, 197
(Extra-mathematical associations in mathematical images)
India ink and pencil on paper, 44x62 cm.
Tanya stares at a simple landscape, where only a few objects lie, a second portrait hovering below, on the horizon. Light reflects off her softly featured face, highlighting too the wrinkled space that envelops her image, both above and below. Clearly this image is not motivated by mathematics, and yet even here some mathematical thoughts creep in. Consider the background relief the rippled two-dimensional surface that fills most of the image. The breaking lines, the singular points, the branches in the surface all grow out of images of certain analytic functions, particularly a Riemann surface that winds off to the right. In a sense, the background is like a tapestry of mathematical forms, woven together into a landscape that becomes an intriguing setting for this otherwise gentle portrait.
