Don Bristow
Photographer and Mathematical Artist
A Sunday School teacher began her lesson with a question, “Boys and girls, what do we know about God?” A hand shot up in the air. “He is an artist!” said the kindergarten boy. “Really? How do you know?” the teacher asked. “You know – Our Father, who does art in Heaven…” While the kindergarten boy’s understanding of the scripture verse wasn’t correct, his understanding of an aspect of God may have been profound.
Don Bristow explores mathematics and searches for beauty in solutions to equations that, although discovered by mathematicians, pre-existed from the creation of space and time.
Bristow’s work is a union of three things. First is his search for strange attractors in solutions to differential, recurrence and even random equations that have surprising and beautiful outcomes, then capturing those outcomes as extremely high-resolution digital image files. Second is layering image files and applying transforms between them that result in outcomes that have meaning to the artist. Third is outsourcing printing to the company that invented printing to metal, Vivid Metal Prints.
Bristow is a photographer and fractal (mathematical) artist living in Bullard, Texas, with his wife Sandy and dog Bentley. His background includes 20 years in the software business, 5 years as a professional photographer and 15 years in the website design and hosting business. He is a U.S. Navy veteran and holds 2 degrees from California State University Sacramento.
Because it can stimulate minds and trigger new ideas, Bristow believes that his body of fractal art is an excellent choice for commercial interiors, especially lobbies and conference rooms. But Bristow’s work also hangs in private homes. Exhibits have demonstrated that it appeals to young and old, and to artists as well as engineers.
While fractal art is still considered an experimental art form, Bristow maintains a great deal of discipline in his work, and he hopes to help lead the art form out of its infancy and into wider acceptance. One of qualities he’s been working towards is making fractal art more human so as to elicit emotional responses in addition to analytical ones.
Bristow has been serving as IT Director for Bethesda Health Clinic for over a decade, and he has enjoyed participating in many East Texas exhibits having a theme of the arts in promoting health and healing.
Bristow was a sponsor of the Art Connection of East Texas radio program from its launch in 2016 through 2024, and he has been a frequent guest of the program. He currently volunteers for Art Connection as Media Director. Below is one of many radio ads that spotlighted Bristow’s website design services with a comment about his art by Chris Leahy, the co-host of Art Connection and former Executive Director of the Tyler Museum of Art.