"Geometry is the archetype of the beauty of the world", said Johannes Kepler, the 17th century German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer. 

 

Geometry is the science of shapes. Square, triangles, lines, and circles are all geometrical elements - the core of a painting. Hard edged geometrical shapes are used to create bold imagery or more subtle “soft edged” geometry to define or aid a composition.

 

Soft geometry occurs more in natural environments and its loosely defined shapes such as triangles or circles are used as compositional elements in a painting.

Soft geometry can be hard to find at first. The reason for this is that our minds are hard-wired to look for hard, well-defined shapes. However, if you start to look carefully at scenes or at human body, you will soon start to see soft geometry everywhere. 

Often geometry will work hand in hand with symmetry and there is no more obvious example of this than leading lines. Leading lines are a geometric shape that in many cases split a scene into two distinct mirror images.

 

In this painting jas mand has tried to capture the beauty of geometry plus symmetry. Has he succeeded in doing so?