Leigh Stewart

When I tell people that I am a mathematics major and a studio art minor, overwhelmingly the response I get is one of surprise that I have chosen such a strange combination of disciplines. “They’re so different from each other!” people exclaim. Mathematics is often considered a “left-brained” discipline, logical and linear in its structure, and art a “rightbrained” activity, stirring one’s intuition and encouraging spontaneity and unpredictability. As a student of both disciplines I experience some sort of intrinsic enjoyment when these stereotypical conceptions of each are contradicted. This occurs with surprising frequency. For example, it takes creativity to conceive of a geometry where the degree sum of a triangle is strictly less than 180 degrees, and the transference of what an artist sees in three dimensions to a two-dimensional canvas takes a surprising amount of discipline and logical strategy. To a further extreme, I am always intrigued and excited when art and mathematics seem to connect or overlap. While there is a significant distinction between the “truth” which each discipline attempts to describe, probe at, or unveil, the strategies employed as “ways of knowing” each respective truth share a number of common traits.