Two Hundred Sixty-Nine

M.C. Escher introduced me to optical illusion in art. I must have been in my mid to late teens when I first encountered Escher’s work, an odd assortment of impossibilities made possible with pen and ink and woodcuts and such. Escher’s graphics, inspired by mathematical relationships.  I remember, quite vividly, looking at his piece entitled ‘Drawing Hands’ and deciding I wanted to replicate the piece. I tried, repeatedly, but never achieved anything like his level of artistic capability. I think I drew some very realistic hands (my own), but they were not life-like. Escher’s hands arose from the page as if they were really emerging, fully formed, from a blank sheet of paper. A later piece, ‘Relativity,’ depicted an impossible architectural scene in which stairs, on completely different planes, played a prominent part. My oldest brother, knowing of my fascination with Escher, bought me a coffee table book of Escher’s works; I suspect my copy of that book is more than forty years old. I still have that book today and occasionally thumb through it, allowing myself to enter the realm of impossibility Escher created. I wonder whether some kid today—the same age now as I was then—is just as fascinated with Escher as was I? Probably. But our perspectives on the world would be quite different.