The Eventual Triumph of Art

You don’t often encounter an 80-year-old psychiatrist who uses modular graphics synthesizers and mathematical algorithms to generate vibrant fractal fusions in his spare time. In the strange and creative case of Claude McCoy, he has practiced psychiatry for 50 years but now works only one day a week. After initially downsizing his practice eight years ago, he began experimenting with Bryce on a Macintosh, with which he produced fantasy art and images of tall ships. It didn’t last long. Fractals eventually piqued his interest, but he couldn’t nd software with a satisfactory user interface. Enter ArtMatic and the language of algorithmically generated abstractions. With ArtMatic, McCoy’s creative output soared to new heights and depths. In school, McCoy was discouraged to even consider creative pursuits. As is often the case, his teachers emphasized nancial security, which artistic practice usually doesn’t provide. But because creativity had always existed in his family, McCoy knew he had it in him somewhere. A dormant muse of algorithmic visual composition lay in waiting. It just took several decades before that muse woke up. “I grew up in a family with artistic genes and was awed by my mother’s ability to use watercolors to paint beautiful owers and bunnies on Easter eggs,” McCoy tells me. “In junior high, my favorite classes were the art classes. I told my ninth-grade art teacher that I would like to become a professional artist. She encouraged me not to do that because of the dif culty of making a signi cant living with art. I took her advice and went in a completely different direction with my professional career.” In college, though, McCoy took as many art electives as he could, knowing he’d get good grades and that it would help jack up his GPA. It apparently worked. Art helped him get into grad school, and nearly half a century later, he was toiling away at a Macintosh, algorithmically spawning a consistent oeuvre of vibrant imagery.