Does beauty lie in the specific and infinite details of things? As Dowse notes, one thing he always returns to in his work is nature; the idea of present phenomenon beyond our control and comprehension that holds beautiful textures all around us. One need only take a closer look at the elements of the world to understand how everything in art is always a mere representation of reality. Begging another question along this path of constant asking: Did The Big Bang, or whatever the prime mover was, did it define the bounds of beauty? And is the artist’s motivation, their creative fuel, a desire to capture and reproduce a fragment of this beauty?
There is a meeting point between mathematics and emotion. We tend to separate one from the other believing that logic cannot apply to the messiness of human feeling. But our cosmos is governed by laws. Music uses math to make its effect. Jewellery uses physics to form its pieces.
There is somewhat of an ugliness to the belief that we can tie everything to numbers. Love. Empathy. Spirituality. These always seem like concepts that should flow without rules. But we cannot deny the presence of these patterns. From the spiralled galaxies of our expanding universe to the double helixes of our genetic code. There are underlying connections in all the things we tend to note as being part of something beautiful.
Jewellery showcases this intersection of art and design, engineering and magic, in a more overt fashion than most other known mediums. The physics is at the forefront of the creative process. It dictates its direction. And yet, when we admire a piece of jewellery as non-jewellers, we never think of the science, we are simply struck by the feeling and meaning the art conjures inside of us.