Charles Pegge
Geodesic Domes and Faces of the Sphere
As one of Pembrokeshire's returnees I came back to Fishguard after spending too long in electronics and computing. I started painting in my early teens but never considered art as a career. I more or less finished my computing profession in the mid 90's and spent a few years catching up on artistic pursuits.
Most of my work is imaginary and fairly abstract inspired by biomorphic and musical themes as well as the diversity of landscape and atmospheric conditions of Pembrokeshire. My work has become freer and more rugged and has lost some of its fixation with detail. I dont use stylus pens and fine brushes as I used to; digital technology does this far better, leaving me with more rugged media to play with.
Some contemporary ideas inspire me such as evolution, chaos theory and quantum physics. Also, ancient philosophers such as Lao Tsu, founder of Taoism. My favorite period in Western Art is the first half of the 20th century, particularly the work and ideas of Kandinski and Klee for their synthesic qualities, and Bonnard for his liberated and sensuous colour.
Inevitably the Web has drawn me back into the technical side of computing, in the form of programming language development. This has its own kind of abstract beauty of logic and maths; but the brain cannot handle abstractions in isolation. ultimately it has to derive its symbols from the physical world, which we have evolved to deal with.
Personal History(-2008)
I was born December 1955 in Inverness, I spent my first 6 years in the highlands, where my Father, a civil engineer, worked on hydroelectrics. After spending 2 years in Lutterworth in the Midlands, we moved to South West Wales where my parents have long family roots. I was exiled to prep and public school in Shrewsbury at a time when the more brutal aspects of public school life were being rapidly replaced by a more cultured and reflective regime which supported excellent science, arts and craft facilities. In particular, I owe much to the art master, John Alford, for his insights and encouragement. I went to Oxford in 1974 to read Plant Biology and became interested in Transcendental Meditation and after graduating in 1977 worked for the organization for several years.
I took an interest in electronics and after an initial spell in printed circuit board design and I did some microprocessor work for GEC Electrical Projects - Marine, then Porpoise Viscometers in Rugby. After this, I worked for Intermediate Technology, a Third World development organization founded by F Schumacher, (Author of 'Small is Beautiful'), looking after computerisation including software and database development.
I started painting again and moved back to Fishguard in 1998, to a house near the coast path, close to where I was brought up. I spent some of my time assisting Myles Pepper at the West Wales Arts Centre plying my IT skills as well as painting.
In the late 90's I became interested in 3D digital graphics and its application to architecture and to purely imaginary structures. After tentatively planning an extension to my house with an architect friend, (and getting a taste of planning controls) my attention turned to the work of Buckminster Fuller; in particular his Geodesic domes. This became my millenium project. Grasping the geometry of these structures with limited maths skills took quite a while but after a few years I was able to model them both manually and in digital 3D. The main problem was to divide the curved surface into perfectly fitting flat squares, hexagons and pentagons.
I built some of these as frames using very simple materials: 100mm x 22mm planks of timber screwed together to form flat frames 'stitched' together with interlocking screw heads. There are so many designs to explore that most of my models remain on the computer but I have made a selection of these out of cardboard.
Apart from Geodesic domes, my long standing interest in computer languages stems from early encounters with various home computers like the Commodore PET and the BBC micro. I have developed an assembler for the PC called 'Oxygen' for writing very high speed code. In its current form this is deployed as a module for thin BASIC, a free interactive programming system. Our informal team enjoys the benefits of working collaboratively over the web for very rapid development.
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