Artwork copyright Chris Watts. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Artwork copyright Chris Watts. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission.

Focus To, 1988

Chris Watts
(British, born 1947)

Location: Office of the Washington State Auditor, Olympia

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Artist Chris Watts created the painting Focus To as part of his body of work composed according to a mathematical system. To create the composition, he establishes a set of rules and variables governing the order, arrangement, and sequence of numbers and spaces on a grid. He organized this piece around spiral formations. He notes that this process invites the viewer to examine emerging relationships and patterns. He continues that this piece can “stimulate contemplation of what is seen, what is known and perhaps what is unknown, not unlike a map maker. As with a lot of systematically based work, the information and experience is slow to reveal itself.”

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Eastern Washington University.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Artist Chris Watts’ work explores patterns and systems. He often uses numbers, grids, and spiral, diagonal, and horizontal forms. Viewers are drawn to interpreting and unraveling the system – trying to figure them out like a puzzle. Watts is interested in and influenced by Bronze Age stone monuments, spirals and mazes, Pythagoras, counting processes, scientific structures, bell ringing, theosophy, sound, and the geometrical tradition in art. He notes, “the final question for me has always been 'Am I the originator of the visual structure being discovered or am I just uncovering what already existed?'"

Watts earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (1969) from Goldsmith’s College School of Art in London, England, and a Master of Fine Arts (1971) from Ohio University. He taught art at several colleges in England before moving back to the U.S. to be the Chair of the Art Department at Cornish College of Art (1978-1984) in Seattle. He taught painting and drawing at Washington State University in Pullman, Eastern Washington, for 27 years (1988-2015).