CREATING WITH A COMPASS
The Dimensions of Eisentrager-Painter

[NARRATOR] "Triangles. Vertical and diagonal lines. Curves. Bisecting and trisecting lines. This is creative geometry. James Eisentrager, professor of art at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, combines the mathematical and creative elements of color, shape and design to produce geometric expressions. James Eisentrager's paintings have several layers of colors, shapes and designs. Using a ruler and a home-made compass and charcoal he composes the basic geometric structure of the painting. By applying water soluble paint he can simply change the structure of the painting by swashing it with a wet sponge. And by overlapping colors he can create a blend. By multiplying this process he will produce a colorful multi-dimensional effect. Even some of his early figure paintings have roots in geometry."
[James Eisentrager] "The... the baseball paintings, as some people call them, are to some extent geometric. There's a tic-tac-toe feel going in there. Part of that wasn't... a mental desire of mine but a necessity in solving the paintings because I was capturing postures of moving figures... figures that can't be posed. And they would be radically different sizes so I had to amalgamate these shapes of moving figures and I bumped into this grid. Actually I would like to get back to representational things... but I keep bumping into phenomena and interesting mathematical concepts that cause me to still do one more year of this thing."
[NARRATOR] "Eisentrager looks at a painting as a mathematical problem to be solves. Lines and color are multiplied to create the design. But it is difficult for him to know when a painting is resolved."
[James Eisentrager] "The ideas may become resolved to some extent but the... what one doesn't know is such a vast thing that in trying to solve something one bumps into some more things which then have to be solved. It's a pleasant thought. I mean I'll never be out of work. Matisse said, if I quote him correctly, on his deathbed that... if he had six more months perhaps he could get it right.."